D MummyMan
by valkyrievamp289
Summary: When Tyki Mikk, the accursed High Priest, returns and threatens to rise and doom us all, it is up to Allen Walker, a cursed librarian, his thieving one-eyed best friend, and a rather violent Japanese ex-colonel to save our sorry hides. Sorry Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz. You've had your chance. YULLEN.
1. carnage and curses

**WASA/N:** Believe it or not, this story was inspired by a roll of toilet paper. 8D Because toilet paper reminds me of mummies. xD

**Setting: **1923-1926; Egypt.

**Ages: **Kanda was 21 years old during 1923; he'd be 24 years old in 1926. Allen was 18 years old during 1923; he'd be 21 years old in 1926. Lavi is at the same age as Kanda. In this fanfic, every canon is 6 years older in 1926.

**Warning: **There'll be gay smex in the future (courtesy of Yullen), and be warned that the word "fuck" is found in almost every sentence that comes out of Kanda's mouth. (though I'm not sure if that word was already being used in the 1920s).

**Beta: **My grammar Nazi friend volunteered to be my Beta, and so most of the grammatical errors has been vanquished. XD

_***The italicized texts are the exact same words coming from the movie's screenplay. I know the grammar sucks a bit, but I'd rather not change them, for the sake of establishing the connection between the movie and the fic. 8D_

**Disclaimer: **I don't own D. Gray-Man or the Mummy. I respect Hoshino and Stephen Sommers with all my heart and soul. 8D

CHAPTER I: CARNAGE AND CURSES

Thebes, Egypt 1290 B.C.

The setting sun of Amun-Ra tenderly grazed its golden red gaze over the magnificent Egyptian city of Thebes, giving the infrastructures an esoteric glow of natural gold. The greatest building of them all was the Pharaoh's palace, the one place that was revered as "equal" to the home of the gods. Faithful guards and servants were scattered all over, bowing and making way as the pharaoh himself rode past on his horse-drawn chariot.

_Thebes, city of the living, crown jewel of Pharaoh Seti the First. _

On one special balcony window, a handsome, dark-skinned man leaned against the stone railing, his golden eyes gazing soulfully at the darkening horizon. One slender hand moved towards his crown of deep russet locks, fingers brushing the curly strands back as he tried to straighten out any stubborn knots. His priestly robes were loose enough to expose his whole torso, and his lean but pleasantly muscular figure was fully glorified.

_Home of Tyki Mikk, Pharaoh's High Priest, Keeper of the Dead. _

And then a stunning, olive-skinned youth walked into the outer foyer, making his way towards that same balcony where the High Priest stood. His hair was just above his shoulders and slightly curled; it was the color of polished ebony, and let loose in a wild but alluring fashion. His golden irises gazed intently beyond the curtain of silk that served as the only obstacle between him and the man of his desires, and he strode purposefully towards the barrier. His walk was elegant, catlike, and his wonderfully contoured body was bare to the waist, the black ink patterns on his shoulders and chest marking his bond with the pharaoh.

_Birthplace of Anck-su-namun, the Pharaoh's Fourteenth male consort. No other man was allowed to touch him. _

Tyki's lips broke into a satisfied smirk as he sensed Anck-su-namun's presence, his eyes showering the young man's body with an adoring and lusty gaze as he approached him. _Oh yeah, _he thought, licking his lips as he continued admiring his companion's barely clothed body. _The Pharaoh may be an old fart, but I have to admit, he's got great taste._

A similar smirk was on the consort's face as he stared back into the man's intense gold eyes, a tongue running lightly over his lower lip as his gaze moved towards Tyki's own mouth. No words were needed to express their desires, and in the next moment, their lips were interlocked in a passionate war of tongues and moans.

_But for their love, they were willing to risk life itself._

The priests that Tyki had installed to stand guard were about to close the door when suddenly, Seti himself charged into Anck-su-namun's room. The proud Pharaoh's expression was suspicious as he stared at the silent priests. "What are you doing here?" he demanded, unsettled by their presence in his consort's chambers. Upon receiving only silence as the answer, the Pharaoh's head snapped towards the direction of the balcony, and without further hesitation he marched into the outer foyer, walking abruptly through the thin silk curtain.

Anck-su-namun stood by an onyx statue of a guard dog, leaning casually against it as he gave the Pharaoh a sexy smile. However, his efforts of feigning innocence were thwarted as the Pharaoh's sharp eyes noticed the smudged parts of his paint-on clothes.

"_Who has touched you_?" he hollered in anger, pointing accusingly at a smudged area on his chest. Anck-su-namun didn't reply; instead his eyes flickered towards a figure behind the pharaoh. Seti caught the action and turned around to see who the youth was looking at. But before he could fully react, he felt his sword being pulled abruptly out of its scabbard from behind.

The Pharaoh stared at the impostor with a stunned expression, unable to believe his eyes. "Tyki Mikk?" he gasped. "My priest…" his voice trailed off as he was rendered speechless, but before he could recover, Anck-su-namun pulled out a dagger from behind the statue and brutally stabbed the pharaoh in the back. An impressed whistle escaped Tyki's mouth.

"You are one dangerous man," he teased, smirking at his love as he slashed at the pharaoh's abdomen, earning another cry of pain and a shower of blood. The adulterous consort smiled back at him in amusement.

"Of course," he retorted, wiping the splatter of blood off his face as he stabbed the pharaoh one more time.

"Don't wipe it off," Tyki said, a manic grin plastered on his face. "You look more beautiful when you're covered in blood."

"Why, thank you," Anck-su-namun grinned in reply, the same crazed look in his golden eyes. A bloody finger was brought up to his lips, and he licked at the red liquid with vigor. "Maybe we should do this again."

Tyki's grin grew wider, and after burying the sword in the Pharaoh's head, the handsome priest stepped closer to the now master-less youth, bloody hands gently curling around his chin. "I shall happily grant your request," he purred bending down to lick his love's bloodstained lips. "My prince."

Before they could further indulge in their morbid fantasies, shouts resounded from the other side of the door, which the priests had dutifully bolted under Tyki's orders. Slams echoed all over the room as the door was broken down, and soon alarm set into the lovers' eyes. The bald priests, being loyal subjects to Tyki, started grabbing him and hissing desperate details about his escape. But the High Priest wasn't listening. His attention was only focused on the determined look on his lover's face. He didn't even need to hear it. He knew what exactly was running through his mind at that moment.

_No, _he mouthed, his eyes desperate. _Don't do this. _

But Anck-su-namun defiantly shook his magnificent head in response. "You must go," he said, his voice unfaltering as if he had expected this from the start. "Save yourself. Only you can resurrect me." _Resurrect me and we will run away. Together. _

"You don't have to do this," he pleaded, struggling against his stubborn servants, who were now resolutely pushing him out of the window, towards safety. At the back of his mind, Tyki made a mental note to punish his servants later in revenge. "Please, just escape with me."

But Anck-su-namun didn't answer. Instead, the loud, commanding voices of the Mumai – Pharaoh's personal guards – answered in his place. Tyki was successfully shoved out the window before the guards ripped through the silk curtain. From underneath the balcony, he could only see the shadows of the people inside the room. He tried to move up higher to see more, but as the events escalated, Tyki found himself wishing that he had not seen anything at all.

"My body is no longer his temple!"

That was the last thing Tyki heard before he saw Anck-su-namun's shadow depict how he personally plunged the dagger into his own heart.

Hamunaptra, City of the Dead, 1290 B.C.

_To resurrect Anck-su-namun, Tyki Mikk and his priests broke into his grave and stole the body._

Mournful, golden eyes stared at the lifeless body in front of him. _So beautiful that even death cannot mar his splendor, _he thought, caressing a deathly cold cheek with a finger coated in fresh blood. He had taken it upon himself to personally dispose of the tomb guards in the most gruesome and inhumane way. "You do not deserve to be in the underworld, my love," he whispered into Anck-su-namun's ear. "I will bring you back. No matter what it takes."

_They raced deep into the desert, taking Anck-su-namun's corpse to Hamunaptra, City of the Dead, ancient burial site for sons of pharaohs and resting place for the wealth of Egypt. _

The cold desert wind didn't affect Tyki's resolve as his entourage raced across the sand's surface, their torches the only source of light, since the new moon refused to shed any of its silver rays to guide them. From afar, the High Priest could see the isolated city of Hamunaptra, and as he drew nearer, Tyki Mikk could feel his heart palpitating both in excitement and anxiety. _Just a little more time, _he thought, glancing at the chariot that carried his lover's body. _Hold on, love. Wait for me. _

_For his love, Tyki Mikk dared the gods' anger by going deep into the city, where he took the Book of the Dead from its holy resting place._

The whole city was void of any form of life – obviously – which made it easier for Tyki to navigate through the area without having to worry about being caught. He found the great statue of Anubis, and without hesitation or even a single thought about the wrath of the gods, the High Priest stole the Book of the Dead from its holy resting place and brought it with him to an underground ritual chamber where he had placed Anck-su-namun's body.

_Anck-su-namun's soul had been sent to the dark underworld, his vital organs removed and placed in five, sacred canopic jars._

Because he had killed the pharaoh, Anck-su-namun's soul was cursed to travel a painful journey to the dark underworld. Tyki knew that the more time he took preparing for the ritual, the less chance he had of retrieving his beloved. And so without further delay, the five canopic jars holding Anck-su-namun's vital organs were placed on the altar beside his corpse. The bald priests had formed a circle around the aforementioned altar, bowing and chanting simultaneously. Tyki, on the other hand, stood tall in his priestly robes, and held the black Book of the Dead with tensed hands. The incantations slipped off his tongue with ease, and as he chanted, his golden eyes flickered towards the unmoving body, waiting for any signs of life. 

_Anck-su-namun's soul had come back from the dead. But pharaoh's bodyguards found out and stopped him before the ritual could be completed._

At last, the dentritus pond, believed to be the entrance to the underworld, started to stir. One of the canopic jars shook, and soon Anck-su-namun's severed heart started to beat with life. Tyki watched in fascination as a figure made of black mist rose out of the murky depths, and began to fly towards Anck-su-namun's body.

The chanting intensified and escalated into the climax of the ritual, where Tyki was supposed to slice open his chest and place his now-beating heart back inside. Before he could do so, however, pharaoh's guards arrived and stopped him, making Tyki unable to complete the ritual. The soul, incapable of holding on to a dead body, removed itself from the corpse and dove back down to the underworld, leaving with an eerie, high-pitched scream.

_His priests were condemned to be mummified alive. As for Tyki Mikk, he was condemned to endure the Hom-dia, the worst of all ancient curses, one so horrible that it had never before been bestowed._

Tyki could hear the blood-curling screams of his servants as they were mummified alive, and he couldn't help but cringe as he witnessed one of them have his brains pulled out while he was still conscious. As sickening as it was though, a part of the golden-eyed man felt amused by the screams that entered his ears. Tyki strangely liked the notion of inflicting pain on others, and loved to hear people scream in agony. The sound ironically calmed his senses, and even provided him with small but appreciated amounts of personal pleasure.

However, Tyki knew that he would be screaming louder than any one else.

The masked embalmers cut his tongue off and fed it to the dogs, after which he was wrapped with bandages that were heavily anointed with acrid smelling oils, which would have made Tyki gag if he could. After being completely wrapped alive, Tyki's body was then placed inside a black casket, where man-eating scarabs were tossed in. The embalmers, calmly ignoring the High Priest's muffled screams as the bugs ate through his flesh, closed the coffin and sealed it within a secured marble sarcophagus.

_He was to remain sealed inside his sarcophagus, buried at the foot of Anubis, the undead for all for eternity. They would never allow him to be released. For he would arise a walking disease, a plague upon mankind, an unholy flesh-eater, with the strength of ages, power over the sands, and the glory of invincibility._

Hamunaptra, Egypt. 1923.

"Holy _shit._"

A stunning, longhaired man glared at the approaching horde of rebellious Tuaregs who were trampling the hot desert sand with dozens of aggravated horses. The coal dark eyes on his face narrowed as he steadily loaded his revolvers and .44 caliber rifle with bullets from the bandolier that was wrapped around his torso in a crisscross fashion. His handsome, Japanese features were slightly roughened by the coarse desert winds, and his pale skin was tanned due to prolonged exposure to the burnished sun. Long, midnight blue locks were tied up in a high ponytail, while bangs arranged in a semi-straight cut fringe shadowed the upper part of his face.

"Damn, I knew this was gonna be a lousy day," he growled under his breath as he positioned his rifle and steadily watched the approaching enemies move across the sand.

"Hell yeah," the person beside him replied. The man was, strangely, wearing a cowl similar to the coxcomb of a medieval jester. Inverted purple triangles were painted below his eyes, running down to his lower cheeks. A panicked look was in his eyes. "Personally, I would like to surrender," he stated, turning to the Japanese man. "Why can't we just surrender, Captain?"

The Japanese man rolled his eyes. "Shut up and gimme your bandolier," he ordered, and his clown-like subordinate did not fail to obey, immediately pulling off his cartridge belt.

"Ya' know what? Let's run away. Right now. While we can still make it," the clown added as he handed his ammo to the grumpy Japanese. The other man hissed. His companion probably didn't understand the meaning of "Shut up." Many people didn't, these days.

"Now, hand over your fuckin' revolver. Loser shit like you won't be able use it, anyway," he snapped, and the other man complied, almost tossing the gun at him as if he himself was afraid to hold it. The captain clucked his tongue in disdain. _Why the hell did I get stuck with a bunch of losers? _he wondered, growing angrier by the second. The sun only emphasized the scowling expression on his face.

"Then let's play dead, huh? Nobody ever does that anymore," the other man mused wistfully, earning another menacing growl from his captain.

"Goddamnit, go find me a stick," he demanded, earning a confused stare from his subordinate.

"A stick? In the desert? Why?"

"So that I can shove it down your fucking throat, because you obviously need a damn backbone, you spineless coward!" the captain snarled, causing the other man to instantly back away. "How the hell did a dipshit like you get in the Legion anyway? Fuckin' French don't know how to choose good soldiers these days, Jesus Christ."

The clownish man held up his hands in defense. "No need to be so harsh, Cap'n Kanda," the man replied. "I got in here 'cuz I was caught stealing some stuff from a synagogue somewhere in Turkey. The French said that I could either go to jail or join the troops. I thought this was the best option at first," he paused as he eyed the dangerously increasing number of charging enemy troops. "But obviously, I was damn wrong."

"Hell yeah, you were damn wrong, Daisya," Kanda sneered, noting the man's frightened look. "Go ahead and run while I'm busy, 'cause if I find you again, I'll shoot you," he deadpanned, cocking one of his revolvers. "I swear to every fuckin' god that I will."

Daisya didn't need to be told twice. He was already running away from the city's entrance before Kanda could say another word.

"Che," Kanda chided, re-focusing his attention onto the approaching enemy. There were a couple more Legionaries who ran away, but the majority stayed behind. Somehow, Kanda was grateful that there were many courageous men left in his battalion. Stupid too, since all of them knew that they would definitely lose and die. But at least they'd die as heroes. Not as cowardly scum who ran away.

"STEADY!" he shouted, signaling for every single soldier hold on tightly to his rifle and aim.

"Steady, steady," Kanda continued shouting. In a burst of sand, the enemies stepped into their firing range. "FIRE!" he hollered, and a split second later, the sound of guns firing echoed all over the abandoned city. The soldiers immediately reloaded their rifles.

"FIRE!" And bullets started flying once again. Dozens of Tuaregs fell on the sand, either shot dead, or trampled by panicking horses.

"FIRE!" Another line of enemies ate sand.

"FIRE!" But apparently, the enemy had had enough. Shots started coming from the opposing side, and soon, members of the French Foreign Legion dropped dead onto the desert sand. Kanda cursed loudly in Japanese as two men beside him both received a bullet in the head. He reloaded his rifle, and expertly took down six men. However, that was not enough to stall the enemy. They managed to breech the city's entrance, and plowed into the ruins, striking down the remaining Legionaries.

Running out of bullets for his rifle, Kanda took the barrel of his gun and started clubbing the riders off their steeds, fighting with the vigor of a man possessed by instinct to survive. He then threw away his rifle and cross-drew his two revolvers, blowing the men of their horses without any sign of mercy.

Kanda was doing just fine. Until his bullets ran out.

"Son of a bitch," he hissed, throwing his empty guns to the ground as he made a run for it. Four heavily armed Tuaregs on horses came after him, and he barely managed to evade their shower of bullets. As he ran into the city, he saw Daisya inside an open Temple doorway, pushing the heavy stone door.

"Hey, Daisya, wait up!" he called out to his subordinate as he started running towards the Temple's direction. The clown-like man pretended to not hear him, and instead applied more force in order to close the door faster. "Oi! What the fuck are you doing? Wait up!" Kanda shouted, running faster. The sound of hooves colliding against the sand was deafening. The door was three-fourths closed now, and Daisya still showed no intention of waiting for Kanda.

"Don't you close that door, you goddamn fucktard!" Kanda hollered, a madness in his dark eyes. "DON'T YOU CLOSE THAT DOOR!"

The captain found himself slamming against a stone door that wouldn't budge no matter how hard he pushed it. _There's got to be a knob somewhere, _he thought desperately, looking around the door. But as bullets collided against the doorframe and barely missed him, Kanda knew that he had no more time to waste.

"You're gonna pay for this, Daisya!" Kanda snarled loudly, before leaving the door and running through the ruins, jumping and rolling around as he avoided more of the bullets. He found a spare revolver strapped to his leg and started shooting at his pursuers, managing to bring one down but only aggravating the other three. _Damn this, _he thought as he continued running. _City of the Dead. What a shitty place to die. _

He turned a corner and found himself in a dead end. The sound of hooves came closer to him, as well as the distinct clacking sound of guns being loaded. _This is it, _he thought, inhaling deeply as he turned to face his enemies and certain death. He closed his eyes and raised his right hand, giving his soon-to-be executers the finger.

Kanda waited for the sensation of bullets piercing his skin, but after a few seconds of silence he opened his eyes curiously and found no one in front of him. From his place, he saw the horses of the Tuaregs frantically galloping away, as if they were desperate to get away from something terrible.

The Japanese captain stared at his middle finger with a whole new level of respect. But before he could ponder on how that rude sign was actually an effective weapon, his primal instincts sensed the presence of something evil standing behind him. Without stalling for even a second, Kanda immediately jumped back and stared at the weathered head of Anubis that seem to be glaring at him. The evil aura that surrounded the area was strong, making Kanda gulp and cautiously increase the distance between him and the statue. _Damn it, _he thought, realizing how stupid he was acting. _It's just a fucking statue. What the hell is scary about a fucking statue, Kanda?_

But he didn't stop backing away. If there was one thing Kanda trusted more than his mind, it was his instinct. And it was definitely screaming for him to _get the hell away from there. _

Suddenly, the sand began to shift under Kanda's feet. Alarm rattled the man's mind, and he hurried back as the sand fell away; it seemed to have huge-ass snakes wriggling and writhing beneath it, forming shapes and lines – drawing a picture. Kanda didn't stay and wait to see what it was. His instincts were working overtime, and he could not believe the amount of primal fear he was feeling. Before the picture was completed, Kanda was already running out of the city, towards the open desert.

_What...on earth was that? _he thought, slowing down into a jog as he looked warily behind him. Kanda shuddered, remembering that frightening presence. He had never experienced something like that in his entire life in the military. It was…_inhuman. _Monstrous, even. And _evil_. Not the "evil" vibe that terrorists released. This evil felt more… _ancient. _More _powerful._

This time, Kanda's increased battle awareness perked up, and his eyes moved towards a nearby cliff, where he spotted several people mounted on horses. He frowned, wondering why he wasn't being shot down right now. _They don't look like the Tuaregs, _he contemplated as he squinted against the sun for a better look at them. They were all dressed in black garments, their faces hooded. _Well, if they aren't killing me, then they're probably not enemies. Not allies either since none of them are showing any intention of helping me. _

Kanda sighed and looked away, concentrating on how he was going to get to Cairo alive. He had no food and no water…but he knew the way. And he knew that, on foot, it would take a person at least two days if he ran all the way. But if he walked, it would take a good four to five days.

On the cliff, one of hooded figures watched the Japanese man carefully. "Brother," a female voice said slowly. "Is it okay to let him live?"

"Don't worry, Lenalee," another voice with a strange Australian accent replied. "There's no way he can survive the desert without food or water. He'll die before he can tell anyone about Hamunaptra. Right, Komui?"

"What's important is the _creature _remains asleep and undiscovered. We do not need more blood spilled today. Let us leave him alone," Komui announced, and murmurs of agreement followed. _As long as we, the Medjai, descendants of the holy Mumai, make sure that "he" will never awaken, then everything will be fine._

Everything would be fine.

**A/N:** Wheee~! The idea of Kanda being Brendan Fraser makes me squeal!

Hahaha, naughty Tyki. You damn sexy priest. :P And damn, the Fourteenth is one hot mistress. xD

Anyway, sorry to Daisya fans out there. I didn't mean to make him look so wimpy, or traitorous, or cowardly, but I just can't find someone else who'll fit the category. And I needed someone who had contact with both Kanda and Tyki in the anime, so there. xD Anyway, lulz, Kanda's magic middle finger! XD

Come on, REVIEW people! And tell me about any spelling or grammar mistakes, will ya? 8D

Also check out my other Yullen fic entitled **Handicapped Love.** 8D you'll love it.


	2. decipher and discover

**A/N: **All hail the toilet papers. 8D Oh-kay, that was completely random and stupid but who cares? XD MANY THANKS TO ALL THOSE WHO REVIEWED! Because you did, I'm going mention all of you! xD THANKS for all the encouragement: **WrathofMugen, AlcoholicTree, AriSeptona, Nusku, AnimePinkGirl, kaydoodle, Lochesh, a1y-puff, flower mirage, **and **SilentKiller1**~! For you sakes I decided to update quickly! XD

And YAYZ I have a beta now, who is a tough grammar Nazi, but is AWESOME and made out of EPIC WIN.

Oh yeah, my chapter titles suck btw. XD But I'm not giving up on the alliteration shit. It's sort of funny and amusing. 8D

CHAPTER II: DECIPHER AND DISCOVER

Cairo, Egypt. 1926 (3 years later)

Deep within the bowels of the Museum of Antiquities lies a room filled with rows and rows of towering bookshelves, each of them filled with books on everything there was to know about Egypt. And between two of these rows, a white-haired man in his early twenties was found standing at the top of a ladder that leaned against one of the shelves. He was dressed in boring English apparel, complete with a long-sleeved white shirt, traditional ribbon necktie and black boots over plain black trousers. His attire was in short, a prudish _nightmare_.

Fortunately for Allen Walker, his personal features – white hair, weird scar, and _small _stature – were far too peculiar for anyone to notice his boring clothes.

A gloved hand took one book from the stack in his arms and inserted it into a space found in the upper shelf. "Stones..." he muttered, then took another book from his arms, squinting as he strained to read the small printed title. "States…no…Statues," he sighed, and placed it beside the previous book. "Seth volume I." He paused, looked farther up the shelf, and found the space he was looking for. "Seth volume II," he added, placing another book on that same shelf. "And lastly…"

Allen frowned and narrowed his bright grey eyes. "Tuthmosis? How'd you get here?" he wondered aloud, twisting his head towards the shelf behind him. "There's the 'T' shelf," he mumbled and then looked down. It was a long way down the ladder and a long way back up if he decided to do it the conventional way. _Oh well, _he thought, shrugging. _The shelf is near enough, I think. I'll be able to reach it from here. _

He gingerly started to reach across the aisle with the Tuthmosis book in his hands, but found that the other shelf was a little farther then he had expected. Sighing in annoyance, Allen tilted his body towards his desired shelf and stretched his arm as far as he could while keeping a tight hold on the ladder. _Just…a little…more…_ He was almost there. _Just a little bit closer…_

All of a sudden, the ladder pulled away from the shelf, and Allen, in his alarm, dropped the book and gripped the wooden rungs tightly. The ladder miraculously stood straight up, swaying only slightly, and he looked for all the world like he was balancing on a pair of ridiculously tall stilts.

As he held on for dear life, Allen could have sworn that he'd forgotten how to breathe.

_Good Lord, _his mind whimpered as he continued holding his breath and staring down at the cold, marble floor that seemed so dangerously far away. _Almighty Father. Abraham. Jacob, Joseph, Jesus, _he chanted, growing more desperate as the seconds passed by. _All the saints up above. Please have mercy on me. I'm too young to join you. If you need someone with a beard, go take Cross instead, even if he's too much of a bastard that you'll probably kick him out the second you look at him. _

The ladder wobbled treacherously, and a thick drop of sweat trickled down from his forehead. _God— _he tried to pray again, but before he could continue, the ladder fell out of balance, swiftly turned around, and soon Allen found himself stilt-walking through the aisle.

"Aaaaahh!" Allen screamed, now completely terrified as Lady Luck finally gave up on him. The ladder did a frightening 180-degree turn before crashing against one of the huge shelves.

For a moment nothing happened, and the ladder appeared to be leaning peacefully on the shelf, making Allen want to sigh heavily in relief. But before he could even open his mouth, the bookshelf gave way under his weight and toppled downwards, colliding against the shelf behind it. For a moment, Allen felt pretty fortunate that the bookshelf had muffled his fall, but the horrors did not stop there.

The British man dumbly stared at the domino effect applied onto the collapsing shelves, his mouth ajar as he watched every single shelf he had painstakingly arranged and catalogued for weeks tumble down like buildings during an earthquake. As the last of all the shelves fell to the floor, the only word Allen managed to release was a tiny, "Oops."

"_What the fuck, brat?_"

Allen instantly stiffened as that painfully familiar voice entered his ears. He turned around warily and found his poor excuse of an uncle standing on one of the fallen shelves, a lit cigar clenched between his teeth. The look on his face was far from pleased. "Cross, um, hi," Allen hummed nervously, thinking of a good lie to explain what had happened. "Well…this is…"

"This is what I call a _mess _you useless idiot," Cross sneered (scowled?), taking the thick roll of tobacco out of his mouth. "What the fuck happened to my library? It's unbelievable that someone as _small_ as you can create such a _big_ disaster!" the man exclaimed angrily, gesturing wildly at the fallen shelves. "Christ, I'd rather have locusts, frogs, flies or any other kind of shit than you! Compared to you, the plagues were the closest thing to _money_! They made me _happy._"

Allen pressed his lips into a thin line. God, how he _wished _he could say the exact same things to his uncle! Compared to his smoking, alcoholic, good-for-nothing arse, the plagues were the closest things to _heaven_. The young man knew that Cross didn't have any right to insult him because Allen was a better human than he was, but he restrained himself from releasing any smart retorts, because as big a scumbag his uncle was, the man still had a _gun. _And worse, he knew how to _use _it.

"I'm sorry," he replied politely, trying to sound as repentant as possible. "It was an accident."

Cross snorted and took another drag at his tobacco, making Allen's eye twitch in annoyance. "Look brat," he snapped. "I'm not stupid. When Ramses destroyed Syria, _that _was an accident." He leaned closer to Allen and purposely blew a thick whiff of smoke towards his face. Allen scowled, wrinkling his nose. "You, on the other hand, are a _catastrophe_! Those Egyptian god fucktards are probably laughing at me right now for putting up with you! Which reminds me," he paused and narrowed his eyes. "Why the hell do I put up with shit like you, anyway?"

Allen couldn't take any more of this verbal abuse. He _needed_ to talk back or else he'd explode.

"You put up with me because I can read and write ancient Egyptian – unlike you –decipher hieroglyphs and hieratic – unlike you – and I am the _only_ person within a thousand miles who knows how to properly code and catalogue this lousy library!" he exclaimed indignantly, his face red with anger.

"I put up with you because your dead father's my damn brother, that's why!" Cross snarled, making Allen blink back in shock. "If it weren't for his last will, I would have kicked your poor ass outta here the moment you turned twenty-one!"

He paused once more, obviously getting uncomfortable about mentioning his deceased sibling. Allen just stared at him blankly, reduced to a flabbergasted state at Cross' remark. "I don't care how you do it," Cross stated, his voice slightly lower than before. "I don't care how long it takes. Just straighten up this miserable place!"

With that, Cross turned around and stormed out of the library, leaving a thick trail of smoke behind.

Allen's lips pursed into a furious scowl as he glared at the empty space that had once been Cross. "Jerk," he muttered under his breath, angrily kicking a stray book on the floor. "One day I'll mummify him alive. I swear I will." _I will cut off his tongue while he's still conscious. I will get a hot iron hook, shove it up his nose, and pull out the thing he calls his brain. I will—_

_Schrufff….schruufff…._

His train of thought was interrupted by an unusual sound, coming from a nearby gallery.

_Schruffff….schruufff…_ It sounded like bandaged feet slowly dragging across the marble floor. The frown on Allen's face was replaced by a perplexed expression. "Hello?" he called out, confused as to why there was another person in the museum. They weren't open yet, and Cross was too much of a cheapskate to hire janitors. (He made Allen do all the work.)

The young man walked out of the library – or what was left of it – and approached the Ramesseum, the gallery where various treasures and artifacts from the Middle Kingdom were stored. Most of them were stolen of course, much to Allen's disapproval. After living with Cross for more than five years, Allen was well aware that his uncle preferred illegal transactions over legal ones. He could easily count with his fingers how many things in the museum actually had authentic documents.

_Schrufff…..schrufff…_

There it was again, and now he was sure that it was coming from somewhere at the east end of the gallery. "Is anyone in here?" he called out in his clear, British accent. No one answered. Allen's frown deepened. He could still here the shuffling noise.

Taking on torch from the wall, Allen walked into the dimly lit room, glancing warily at the sarcophagi that were exhibited all over the place. The gallery was spooky all right, with all those shriveled corpses lying around, but he wasn't the type who believed in ghosts or undead mummies. In fact, the things he feared most were the muggers or thieves that could break into the museum. Allen knew self-defense, and was pretty good at landing a firm punch, but if the robber happened to have a gun with him, then he would be helpless.

There was no one around as far as he could tell, and the noises had stopped. Allen walked past a sarcophagus, some statues of Anubis, and then another sarcophagus— _Wait a minute. _Allen froze, slowly turning back to the sarcophagus that was _supposed to be closed._

"Why the bloody hell is that one open?" he wondered out loud. He threw a cautious glance around him to see if the perpetrator was lurking nearby, but when he saw no one, he inched closer to the open sarcophagus and slowly peered inside.

A hideous, rotten mummy suddenly sat up and screeched at him!

Allen screamed in surprise, almost dropping the torch as he stumbled backwards, his face completely horrified. And then, right after his scream came loud fits of hysterical laughter coming from a different source. A young red-haired man with an eye-patch sat up beside the rotten mummy, a completely amused look on his handsome face as he laughed out loud.

"You…! YOU…!" Allen stammered, a furious look replacing his horrified expression.

"Idiot? Rat-bastard? Fool? *Rag-a-muffin? Bum? Please call me something original," the one-eyed man chuckled as playfully placed an arm over the mummy's shoulders. "Like damn sexy beast. Or one-eyed hottie. 'Ello there, Al."

Allen placed the torch on an empty stand and marched towards the sarcophagus, annoyed by his friend's antics. He took a look at the mummy and scowled, taking off the cigarette that was forcefully wedged between its ancient teeth.

"Lavi," he hissed, smacking his friend's forehead with the back of his hand. "Don't you have any respect for the dead? Get out of there this instant!"

The redhead laughed in response and clumsily crawled out of the sarcophagus, almost bringing the mummy's leg with him. " 'Course I do," he drawled, smiling. "That's why I like to join them every now and then," he added, throwing a grin at the mummy's direction.

Allen huffed, crossing his arms over his chest. "Huh. Well, I wish you'd do it sooner rather than later, before you ruin my career the way you ruined yours."

"Al, baby, you don't know what you're saying," Lavi replied, throwing an arm over Allen's shoulders. "My career, as of this moment, is at a very high note." Allen shrugged him off, still pissed, but Lavi didn't mind. "Believe me, this thing I found is ab-so-lute-ly *swell! It's the *real McCoy, I'm tellin' ya!" he exclaimed as he rummaged around his pockets for the "thing."

"Uh-huh," Allen muttered, rolling his silver-grey eyes. "I've heard that lots of times, and all you've managed to give me are useless trinkets only fit for tinder. _Please _Lavi, I don't need any more junk to add to my collection of improvised firewood."

"Since you're my friend I'll pretend I didn't hear that," Lavi answered, and released an excited yelp as he found what he was looking for. "Here it is!"

Allen's eyes widened in curiosity as he stared at the small ebony box in Lavi's hands. From where he was standing, he could see hieroglyphics clearly etched onto the surface, and he started to get the feeling that this was something pretty important. He made a grab at it a bit too eagerly than he had wanted to let on. "Where did you find that?" he asked, trying to sound casual. His one-eyed friend grinned and playfully snatched the box out of his reach.

"At a dig in Thebes. Caught your attention, huh?" Lavi mused, teasingly tossing the box up in the air. "Are you going to add it to your collection of improvised firewood or are you gonna tell me that I'm a genius?"

"You're a genius," Allen lied smoothly, stretching out an open hand. "Now, Mr. Genius, hand that thing over, before I take back what I just said."

Lavi grinned and tossed the box towards Allen, who caught it with ease. As his gloved hands ran over the markings, his eyes began to glint with interest. "What is it?" Lavi asked eagerly, noting the fascinated look in Allen's eyes. "C'mon, Al, my whole life, all I've managed to dig up is junk. Please tell me that I've found _something._"

Allen didn't answer, mumbling to himself as he translated the hieratics and hieroglyphics all over the box. His thumbs moved to the bottom of the box and found a depression. He could almost hear his heart skip a beat as he applied more force, and discovered that the depression was actually a secret button. Wasting no more time, Allen pressed it, and the top part of the box suddenly split open, unfolding itself to reveal a piece of folded papyrus inside.

The grey-eyed man could almost hear his friend's jaw drop in surprise. "Lavi," Allen muttered, his eyes wide as he slowly pulled the piece of parchment out and unfolded it. "I think you found _something._"

"You see the cartouche there," Allen stated, pointing at a pictogram at the lower right corner of the paper, which turned out to be a map. "It's the official royal seal of Seti the First, I'm sure of it."

Cross looked down at the map with a bored expression as he adjusted his rectangular spectacles. "Yeah. Maybe. Perhaps. What the fuck, I don't know, and I don't really care," he droned, yawning. Allen rolled his eyes. Of course, Cross didn't know. But he'd keep talking about it anyway, just to annoy the older man.

Lavi, who was almost bouncing in excitement, ignored the older man's lack of enthusiasm and stared at Allen with a bright green eye. "Seti the First? Al, you're not pulling my leg are ya?" The younger man shook his head. A wide grin broke into Lavi's face. "Hell yeah! Egypt's fuckin' richest king!" He exclaimed, literally jumping up and down. Allen smiled at his friend's happiness, not noticing the strange look on Cross' face as he stared at the box and the map.

"I've already aged the map," Allen continued, ignoring his friend's noisy yelps of joy. "It's about four thousand years old. And those hieratics over there," he paused, pointing at a couple of symbols at the upper left corner of the map. Taking a deep breath, as if he himself couldn't believe what he was about to say, Allen proceeded. "It's Hamunaptra."

Immediately, Lavi's yelps ceased. Cross' eyes widened for a split second, before returning to its bored expression. "Don't be ridiculous, Allen. We're scholars, not stupid treasure hunters. Hamunaptra's a fucking myth."

Allen was about to point out that there was only _one_ scholar in the room at the moment, and it was definitely _not _Cross, but Lavi wisely interrupted him. "Whoa, whoa, _whoa_," the redhead backpedaled. "Are we talking about _the_ Hamunaptra?" He asked, giving the map an incredulous glance.

"Yes," Allen replied, the smile on his face barely containing his own excitement. "The City of the Dead. Where the early pharaohs were said to have buried the wealth of Egypt."

"Yes, yes," Lavi muttered as he started pacing restlessly. "In a big underground chamber. Everyone knows that story. The whole city was rigged to sink into the sand at the pharaoh's command. Egypt was so damn modern during those times. One flick of a switch, and the whole city would disappear beneath the dunes."

"All we know is that the city itself vanished at around 1290 B.C.," Allen added, playing with his gloves and unable to contain his restlessness any longer. This was the biggest discovery of his life, and he was not going to let it slip away.

Cross snorted, holding up the map a little too near the candle lamp. "Sheesh, both of you are a bunch of losers. What did the Americans call this? Oh, yeah. A bunch of fairy tales and hokum." As if on cue, the paper "accidentally" caught fire from the lamp, and with the parchment being so old, the fire quickly engulfed most of it. Cross flung it to the floor, where both Allen and Lavi dove down to put out the fire with their hands.

Lavi held the map up, horrified as he realized that a third of it was missing. He turned to Cross, a hysterical look in his eyes. "You fuckin' burned it! You burned off a part of the lost city!"

The older redhead snorted, unrepentant. "It's for the better, Lavi. Many idiots have wasted their lives trying to find Hamunpatra, and even if I don't care about yours – believe me, I _don't_ – I don't want to be related to idiots like those. No one has ever found that lost city, much like Atlantis. It's not worth spending money over. Use the cash for something more important instead, like paying my debts for instance," he stated flatly, and began reaching out for the box. "But that toy of yours looks pretty good, so maybe it'll sell at a hefty pri—"

Allen snatched the ebony box before Cross could take it and gave his uncle an angry, suspicious look. "Excuse me," he coldly replied. "But I have more important matters to attend to, and I am fortunately not you and your sorry, alcoholic arse, so I can't idle around all day long. Let's go, Lavi."

Cross narrowed his eyes but didn't protest as Allen dragged his still-devastated friend out the door.

As soon as the two were away, the chain-smoking redhead grabbed a small piece of paper and swiftly scribbled on it, rolled it up, and sealed it with the wax from his candle. He stood up and walked over to a birdcage by his office window, letting out a large, bright yellow hawk with a big white cross of feathers on its chest. "Give this to _them_, Tim," he muttered as he tied the paper on the bird's leg. "And hurry. Those desert freaks need to stop that brat before he accidentally awakens _that_."

The bird seemed to nod, as if it understood what Cross had just said. It flew off at a startling speed, headed towards the direction of the desert. The man watched the bird in silence, bringing the cigarette back into his lips. "Sorry, Mana," he whispered, taking the cigarette off and exhaling a cloud of smoke. "I can't spare Allen this time. He knows too much. He needs to be silenced."

The Cairo prison was one of the worst hellholes on Earth, where the majority of Egypt's low-lifes and criminals were to be found. It was a filthy place, without anything in the way of hygiene or manners. The prisoners had barely any rights, and were treated as badly as a herd of swine. Torture and executions were carried out almost daily, depending on the warden's mood, and were almost commodities.

This was where Allen and Lavi found themselves as they walked into the gallows courtyard, escorted by none other than the smelly warden himself.

"You told me you found it in a dig down in Thebes!" Allen hissed at his best friend, keeping his voice low.

The redhead shrugged. "I was mistaken."

"You lied!"

"I lie to everybody. What makes you so special?"

"I'm your best friend!"

"That just makes you more gullible—Ow!" he groaned as Allen elbowed him mercilessly in the stomach. "Jesus, Allen, what the fu— Ow!" he yelped as Allen "accidentally" crushed his foot with his boot's heel. "Fine! Fine! I'm sorry for lying! And I won't use the Lord's name in vain again so stop being such a bully!" he whimpered, limping around.

Allen smirked in satisfaction, giving Lavi a friendly pat on the shoulder. "Think twice before you lie to me," he chirped. "Because I can be pretty violent whenever I want to."

The redhead only scowled in reply, cradling his sore abdomen.

"Now, what exactly is this man imprisoned for?" Allen asked the warden, realizing that he hadn't been informed about it yet. The white-haired man definitely didn't want to be associated with someone imprisoned for murder or rape. He'd rather march into the desert alone than entrust his life to someone like _that_.

"Well, I did not know, so when I heard that you were coming, I asked him myself," the man replied in a thick, Arabian accent.

"And what did he say?" Allen further inquired, pointedly ignoring the look the man was giving the scar at the left part of his face.

"He said… he was just looking for a _good _time."

They stopped in front of the holding pen, when all of a sudden the interior cell doors burst open to reveal a furious Japanese man in chains. Four guards dragged him closer to Allen and Lavi, shoving his head against the bars that separated him from the rest.

He looked as if he had been there for quite a while; his long, midnight blue hair was a mess and in desperate need of a comb. Bruises ran over his Asian skin – marks of the abuse he had experienced in prison – and purple, heavy bags circled his glaring dark eyes. Nevertheless, he didn't look as filthy as one would expect from a Cairo prisoner, and even his bared teeth were still exceptionally white and clean.

"This is the person you stole it from?" Allen loudly asked, the disbelief evident in his face.

"Uh, Allen, maybe you should shut up about that," Lavi replied, cringing as his crime was exposed. The redhead fervently hoped that the imprisoned man wouldn't recognize him. "Anyway," he started, willing to change the subject. "What's your name, good sir?"

"Kanda," the man spat out, glaring at Lavi. Then his eyes flickered towards Allen who was still warily standing behind his friend. "Who are you? And who's the lady freak in the pants?" he sneered, staring at Allen the way someone would stare at a belly-dancing camel.

At that question, Allen snapped out of whatever trance he was in and glared back at the Japanese man. "_Lady Freak?_ I am a man!"he indignantly stated, hands on his hips.

Kanda took one look at his pose and snorted. "Great job acting like one."

"Calm down, Allen," Lavi whispered as he held him back; Allen seemed determined to punch some respect into Kanda's face. "Now, now, you can't lose your cool in a place like this. I thought we were the civilized lot? If you throw a tantrum in here, you'll be no different than that warden over there."

The mere possibility of being similar to the warden irked Allen enough to make him calm down. Taking a deep breath, he looked back at Kanda with a cold glare. Lavi sighed in relief and turned his attention back to the angry-looking Japanese. "Hello, I'm Lavi and this is my friend, Allen."

"What a lousy name," Kanda commented, smirking as he caught the growing infuriation in Allen's eyes. It was interesting to see how the freaky man was able to hide all that anger behind a poker face. "Should've been something more descriptive. Like _beansprout._"

"_Beansprout?_"Allen snapped. "What the bloody hell does that have to do with me?"

"Oh, wouldn't you like to know."

"Hey!" Lavi exclaimed, stepping in between them. "Cut it out, fellas. Dude, Kanda, sir, I know that my friend here has height issues, but please refrain from mentioning them. Maybe once in a while, just for the fun of it, but not during every damn moment you're with each other." He then turned to Allen who seemed to be angrier with him. "Al, _mon amour_, stuff it. If puberty forgot about you, then blame puberty and don't lash out at every innocent human who points out the truth."

Allen scowled but knew that Lavi was right. He glanced at the smirking face of Kanda one more time before gritting his teeth and taking a deep breath. "Yes, fine, I understand, Lavi."

He pushed his friend out of the way, and stared at Kanda eye-to-eye. "Mister Kanda," he started, his voice straining to be polite. "We found your black puzzle box and came here to ask you about it."

Instead of a sneer – which Allen was expecting – Kanda's face went rigid, as if the conversation was becoming uncomfortable. "No," he stiffly stated.

Allen's brows furrowed in confusion. "No?"

"No," Kanda flatly stated, giving the other two a deadpan expression. "You came to ask me about Hamunaptra, didn't you?"

As he said that, Lavi and Allen suddenly grew alarmed and warily looked at the guards to see if they had heard what he just said. The two men moved closer to the bars. "How did you know that the box pertains to Hamunaptra?" Allen asked, barely hiding the curiosity in his voice.

"Because that's where I found it," Kanda replied, still carrying the blank expression. "I was there."

Lavi frowned, giving Kanda a suspicious looked as he inched closer to the bars. "And how do we know that this isn't a load of bull?"

Kanda stared at him for a moment, and then his blank expression slipped as his eyes took in a glint of recognition. "Wait a minute…don't I know you?" he asked testily, keeping a fixed stare at the one-eyed man.

Lavi realized that he was treading in dangerous waters. "Ah, no, I'm just one of those faces—" The red-haired man did not manage to finish his sentence as a fist came flying through the bars, hitting him square in the jaw. He stumbled backwards, and fell on the ground cursing loudly as he grasped at his swelling face. Kanda, on the other hand, received several chastising blows from the prison guards, to which he countered with several nasty looks.

Allen stepped nonchalantly over his friend's writhing body and moved closer to Kanda. "You've actually been to Hamunaptra?" He clarified, astonishment evident in his bright grey eyes.

Kanda raised an eyebrow. "I just decked your friend."

Allen frowned slightly and glanced down at Lavi's writhing body as if this was the first time he actually noticed. "Uh-huh," he said disinterestedly, before turning his attention back to Kanda. "And was I supposed to care?"

Another smirk tugged at the corner of Kanda's lips. _This freak's interesting, _he mused.

"Yeah, I was there," he replied to Allen's earlier question.

"You swear?" Allen pressed on.

Kanda rolled his eyes. "Every damn day."

"No, no I meant—"

"Shut up," Kanda snapped. "I'm not fucking stupid. I know what you meant. I was really there. Seti's place, right? City of the Dead and all that shit with the Anubis statue and that lost ancient book."

The look in Allen's eyes was so bright, Kanda couldn't help but squint and grimace. "Dear god," he heard the grey-eyed boy mutter in awe. "Can you tell me where it is?" He suddenly asked, and Kanda noticed how the man bit his lower lip, as if stopping himself from screaming in delight.

The Japanese man raised another eyebrow. "You wanna know?"

Allen nodded eagerly.

"You _really_ wanna know?"

Allen's head was bobbing up and down so fast that his neck was in danger of snapping.

Kanda held up one of his fingers and motioned for the other man to come closer. Allen, blinded by his excitement, let his guard down and obediently followed.

And suddenly, he felt a firm, calloused hand grab and jerk his chin forward. Before Allen could even blink, he felt his lips being invaded by a strong, wet tongue, which prodded every corner of his mouth with a strange form of enthusiasm. It ended just as abruptly as it had started, but Allen was too stunned to do anything.

"Then get me the hell OUT OF HERE," Kanda hissed, before the guards started hitting him their batons once again, and began dragging him out of the holding pen. "Do it, freak!" he shouted before the internal cell door closed behind him.

Allen backed away from the bars, blinking as his hand flew to his lips. _What the bloody hell—_

"Are you going to watch him hang?" a voice gruffly interrupted his thoughts. Allen's head snapped towards the warden's direction, an alarmed look on his face.

"I beg your pardon, but did you just say 'hang'?"

The warden nodded, maliciously flashing his yellow teeth. "Apparently he had a _very_ good time."

**A/N:** Just so you know, the warden is being portrayed by that fat-ass, short-tempered inspector in the very first chapter of D. Gray-Man manga. Because for some reason, his face really pisses me off.

I found a 1920s slang dictionary and decided to use it for this fic. XD But I'm not gonna use them too much since they're a bit too gay for my tastes. XD (as if this story wasn't gay enough.

*Rag-a-muffin - a dirty person

*Swell - awesome or wonderful

*the Real McCoy - the real thing; genuine article

*_mon amour _- my love (this is not a 20s term, but my beta told me to put more gay stuff in their conversations, so I did. 8D)

And _no,_ I do not know what the hell Tuthmosis is, or what happened between Ramses and Syria. I was just following some parts of the movie's original screenplay. xD You can research about them if you're completely interested. 8D

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE REVIEW! I'll be gone for one whole week to go off to summer camp with my beta, but if lots of reviews come in, I'll be updating as soon as I get back! Same goes for my other story, **Handicapped Love!**


	3. extortion and exploration

**A/N:** I'm a big, fat liar. D8 I know. I'm guilty. I wasn't supposed to update until next week but…but...

I JUST CAN'T STOP MYSELF FROM WRITING. D: D. Mummy-Man keeps on playing in my mind, I just can't concentrate! Dx

I am so SORRY to all those I offended because I updated earlier and not stuck to my promise of updating next week. D8 Please don't hate me. TT_TT

CHAPTER III – Extortion and Exploration

"I will give you one hundred pounds if you spare this man's life."

Allen and the warden stepped onto a special balcony with padded seats and a first-class view of the gallows platform, where the executions took place. Dozens of prisoners surrounded it, all waiting noisily for the show to begin. But as Allen came into view the whole mob grew silent and stared at him with longing, lusty eyes, like starved jackals stared at fresh meat.

The British man conspicuously shuddered and cleared his throat loudly. He was suddenly feeling _very _dirty.

"Lady, er, _sir, _I would _pay _a hundred pounds just to see him hang," the warden stated pointedly in his thick, Arabian accent.

"Two! Two hundred pounds!"

The warden pretended not to hear him.

"Three hundred pounds!"

The warden merely blinked and yawned. Soon the shouts from the prisoners resurfaced as Kanda was dragged up the platform, his hands bound tightly behind his back. The Cairo scumbags protested loudly, pushing themselves against the guards who then threatened the crowd with their guns.

"Let him go!" a fat African-American man with a thick bandana over his dreadlocks shouted. "The man's done nothing wrong! He's only guilty of _not _being a horse-ass fag like you!" The whole congregation cried out in agreement.

"But it's easy to mistake him as one though," another prisoner, this time with grisly bandages covering half of his face, commented rowdily. "With long Betty hair like that, it's hard _not _to mistake him for a woman."

The crowd laughed in response, and even Allen chuckled despite the dire circumstances. _Suits you right for calling me a Lady Freak, _he mused.

Kanda released a loud, menacing growl that immediately silenced most of his onlookers.

"Hey, *bug-eyed Betty," the executioner sneered as he placed the noose around the Japanese man's neck. "Any last requests?"

"Hell yeah," Kanda snarled. "Loosen the fucking knot and let me go."

The executioner smacked the back of his head roughly in reply. "Nice try, wise guy," he retorted as Kanda gave him one of his nasty glares. "But I don't think so."

The longhaired man snorted. "Never knew you could fucking _think _in the first place."

A hiss of pain came from Kanda's lips as the barrel of a gun jabbed him harshly in the ribs. _Motherfucker, _he thought, his eyes taking on a murderous glint as he looked back at his assaulter. _If ever that British beansprout succeeds in getting me out, this son-of-a-bitch will be the first body in my personal pile of corpses. _

"Five hundred pounds!" Allen panicked, grey eyes looking warily at the lever that operated the whole platform. He was well aware that if someone pulled at that lever, the trapdoor would open beneath Kanda and the Asian man would fall…only to be stopped abruptly by the noose around his neck. Worst-case scenario? His neck wouldn't be to stand the sudden application of opposing forces and would simply _snap. _

The warden finally turned his attention towards him, and Allen was just about to feel relieved until he saw the lustful look the Arabian man was giving him. "And what else?" the warden purred, a hand moving towards Allen's thigh. "I'm a _very _lonely man."

Completely revolted, Allen didn't waste any time in slapping the man's hand away.

The prisoners all witnessed this and let out a chorus if insulting laughter, pointing at the warden with jeering faces. "There's no way a pearl like that would sleep with swine like you!"

Even Kanda, despite that fact that a lethal noose was tied around his neck, had to sneer. "Serves you right, fatass."

The warden was obviously insulted, and gestured angrily at the executioner. "Do it!"

"NOOO!"

Allen jumped out of his seat and almost fell off the balcony as he watched Kanda's dangling body in horror.

"Aha! His neck did not break!" the warden mused, a nasty grin on his face as he turned his yellow teeth to Allen. "Ooh! I'm _so_ very sorry! Now we must watch him _strangle _to death!"

The prisoners were now going berserk and began to press aggressively against the guards, no longer threatened by the guns they wielded. Allen, on the other hand, was too busy watching Kanda's body writhe in mid-air. He could almost see the blood draining from his face, and the way the whites of his eyes were showing was not at all comforting.

"He knows the way to Hamunaptra," Allen blurted out, starting to feel that he had reached a whole new level of desperation if he was trying to save the biggest jerk he had ever met.

The warden's head snapped towards the British man, an incredulous look on his face.

"You lie!" he said accusingly.

Allen frowned, offended. "I would never!"

Kanda's face was starting to turn purple.

"You're telling me that this filthy, godless son of a pig knows where to find the City of the Dead?"

"Yes!"

"Truly?"

"Yes!" Allen repeated, feeling vaguely annoyed at having to repeat himself. "And if you release him we will give you…" He hesitated and glanced back at Kanda who glared back at him in response. The longhaired man obviously couldn't believe this British freak. There he was, dying, and there was the beansprout, hesitating over how much his life was worth.

"Ten percent," Allen decided.

The warden narrowed his eyes. "Fifty."

Allen pursed his lips. "Twenty."

"Forty."

"Thirty."

"Twenty-five!"

"Ah! Deal," Allen exclaimed, smirking in victory as he caught the warden in his trap. That trick worked all the time, especially on idiots like the Arabian man beside him. The fat man paused, eyes widening as he realized that he had been tricked, and groaned in defeat. "Cut him down!"

Soon Kanda found himself on the ground, the noose loose around his neck as he gasped and hacked for the air his body badly needed. Despite almost being half-dead, Kanda was still able to look up in Allen's direction; the British youth looked down at him with a confident and somewhat arrogant expression. A telepathic conversation seemed to run through their heads.

"_I saved your life, prick. You owe me big time, and you'd better pay up."_

"_I know that, twerp. Now shut the fuck up and let me fucking breathe."_

"Are you sure that he's going to come?" Allen asked Lavi for the umpteenth time as they carried their luggage through the crowded streets of Giza Port, Egypt.

He'd had half a mind to tie Kanda up and drag him to the desert, but Lavi had stopped him, stating that it wouldn't help the development of their potentially loving, long-lasting friendship if he acted that way.

Personally, Allen didn't give a damn. He didn't want to be friends with that prick anyway. All he cared about was making sure that his missing five hundred pounds – he had still been compelled to pay the warden in the end – hadn't disappeared from his pocket in vain.

"Relax, love," Lavi replied, his voice surprisingly confident. "I did a little background check on our Japanese pal. Apparently, he was the captain of one battalion in the French Foreign Legion three years ago," he explained. "Quite a trustworthy fella he is. They said that even if his commanding officer and about a third of his comrades ditched the field, he still stayed and fought like the soldier he was."

Allen shrugged, still unconvinced.

"I can't say I believe you, Lavi," he said flatly. "I strongly believe in first impressions, and to be frank with you, that man didn't exactly give off a friendly vibe. He didn't even thank me for saving his life!"

"Nah, I didn't think he would," the redhead commented. "He might be a cowboy, but I know his kind. They express their thanks more through actions than words."

Allen rolled his eyes. "Whatever. Personally, I think he's a filthy, rude, complete scoundrel. I don't like him one bit."

"Anyone I know, freak?"

"Why yes, actually it's—" Allen's words died inside his throat as he stared at the strangerin front of him. Or was he a stranger? Allen wasn't completely sure. He just had this inkling feeling that he knew the man. "Oh," he started, still dumbstruck. "Hello."

" 'Hello' my ass," Kanda drawled, giving Allen an unfriendly look. "Will you stop gaping at me like a third-degree retard, beansprout? You're giving me goosebumps, Jesus."

At the word _beansprout, _recognition finally appeared in Allen's grey eyes. "Kanda?" he half-shouted, backing away in disbelief as he blinked half a dozen times to make sure that he wasn't mistaken. _Oh. My. God, _he thought, as that unmistakable glare met his startled eyes. _It is him! I can't believe it!_ The man in front of him was nothing like the man he met in the Cairo prison (except for the foul mouth and glare). His hair was still long, but unlike the bird's nest he saw behind the bars, this one was amazingly straight and shiny, elegantly tied in a low ponytail. The British man was tempted to reached out to touch it, just to see if it was as soft and silky as it looked, but he wasn't _that _suicidal.

"Who the fucking else did you think I was? Your goddamn grandfather?" Kanda sneered as he adjusted the black blazer of his sacque suit. His clothes also caught Allen off-guard. The last time he had seen him – which was a week ago – the Japanese man was wearing rags that reeked of filth and sweat. Now Kanda was dressed in an impeccable suit that didn't look like it was bought from some cheap corner store, and Allen had to admit it. It looked really _good _on him.

"Smashing day for the start of an adventure, eh, Yuu?" Lavi chirped, giving the man a friendly pat on the chest. Kanda automatically reached into his inner breast pocket, just to see if his wallet was still there.

"Ah, no, no, I wouldn't steal from a partner, partner," the redhead said, giving the Japanese man a wide grin. Kanda grunted in relief as he found his money intact, and was about to make his way towards their boat before suddenly realizing something.

He turned back to Lavi, and incredulous look on his face. "What did you just call me?"

"Uh, partner?" the one-eyed man answered uncertainly, wondering what this was all about.

"No, no, before that," Kanda pressed on, the look on his face shifting from incredulous to furious.

A drop of sweat fell from Lavi's forehead. "Uh, er, Yuu? Isn't that your first name?" The man yelped as he dodged an incoming punch from the Japanese man. "What the—"

"Hey, what the bloody hell is your problem?" Allen hissed, grabbing Kanda's arm before it collided with Lavi's face. He didn't really care if the guy decked his best friend again, but he would have liked it if he did it in a less public place. The white-haired man could already feel stares coming from the passersby.

Kanda slapped his hand away. "Don't fucking touch me," he growled, and turned his attention back at the uneasy redhead. "Try using my first name again, and I'll make sure that you'll be sleeping in a fucking sarcophagus for the rest of your damned dead life."

Lavi gulped and nodded, hiding behind his British friend, much to Allen's annoyance. The man made himself a mental note: _Buy Lavi a backbone. And some guts because he sure needs them. _

"Che," Kanda huffed before turning his back on the two and started making his way to the boat. Allen took a deep breath, and despite fearing for his life, made another grab at Kanda's arm.

The Japanese man stopped and stared at the hand as if it was something he would just _love _to shoot, making Allen immediately let go before the man could pull out his revolver. Mustering up all his courage, he gave Kanda a determined look. "Mister Kanda, can you look me in the eye and guarantee me that this isn't some sort of flimflam? Because if it is, I'm warning you—"

"Wait a minute. _You're _warning _me_?" Kanda asked, the disbelief obvious on his face. "Listen, freak, my whole damn garrison believed in this fucking place so much that without orders we marched half way across Libya and into Egypt just to find that city. And when we got there all I saw was sand and death."

The man turned around and marched up the gangplank and onto a slightly crowded passenger barge. For a moment Allen just stared at his departing figure, unable to think of anything else to say. There was a slightly wistful look in his grey eyes, an expression that Lavi noticed.

"Al, heart of my heart, please don't tell me you've fallen for that man because I'll commit suicide if you do," he dramatically whimpered, an action that resulted in Allen mercilessly elbowing the redhead's stomach.

"I'm not gay, Lavi, so stop insinuating that I am."

"But Al, babe, even if you deny it, I would totally understand if you fall for Yuu," Lavi muttered, grimacing as he cradled his sore abs. "He's handsome – don't give me that look. I know you think so too – strong, manly, and all that shit. Now if you can only do something about his dirty mouth—"

"I'm going ahead Lavi," Allen interrupted bluntly, taking his suitcase and walking up the gangplank. "If you'd rather stand there and indulge in your perverted fantasies, I don't really mind, as long as you make sure that if you end up dead in a ditch somewhere, the police won't be knocking at _my_ door."

"Aww, Allen! Don't be such a killjoy! I was just kidding, for heaven's sake!" the redhead whined, picking up his own baggage and following him. "Forgiveness? Please?

Allen sighed and gave his friend a light smile. "Fine, fine, now hurry up and get your arse on the boat before I change my mind and push you over the railing."

"Harsh, Al. Harsh."

"A bright good morning to you all," said a thick, Arabian voice from behind the pair.

Allen turned around and almost groaned as he saw the smelly warden standing behind him, a suitcase in each hand. "Oh dear, what the bloody hell are _you _doing here?" he complained.

The man flashed him his yellow teeth. "I have come to protect my investment, thank you very much," he replied, and roughly pushed the two out of his way. Allen would have fallen into the water if Lavi hadn't grabbed his collar.

"Lavi," the British man suddenly stated, his voice thick with malice. "I take back what I said earlier. There's another person who I would just _love _to push over the railing right now."

"Royal flush, gentlemen," Allen smirked, laying the cards on the table.

It had been an hour since their barge had departed from port, and thirty minutes after he had boarded, that Allen found himself playing poker with a group of odd, dark-skinned, golden-eyed Americans. The group consisted of four men and a teenage girl, who had been eyeballing him shamelessly the entire time he was playing.

"What the fuck— you're cheating, you damn freak!" one of the Americans complained, throwing his Three of a Kind hand on the table. "You won all twenty matches without breaking a sweat! Hell yeah, you're cheating!"

Allen looked at him, a sincerely offended expression on his face. "Excuse me sir," he replied, a hurt tone in his voice. "But I'm afraid I have no idea what you're talking about. You have no objective proof that I have indeed been cheating these past twenty matches, and I must say that your accusation is very offensive."

The teenage girl with spiky hair scowled and roughly kicked the back of her colleagues' seat. "Look what you've done, David! Apologize right now or I'll vandalize your damn face with my oil-paint set."

"But he really is cheating! We can _feel _it!" another man, this time with long blonde hair, interjected. "Right, David?"

"Hell yeah, Jasdero!" his twin brother replied. "We aren't twins for nothin', ya know. When our instinct acts up, it's ab-so-lute-ly fuckin' right!"

Lavi, who was playing with Allen (and also losing to him), looked up and gave the two a dubious stare. " That's just hokum. I can't believe both of you are twins! Aside from the skin color and the eyes, you look nothing alike!"

The two brothers look deeply offended, and before the redhead knew it, two pistols were pressing against his temples. "Say that again an' we'll fuckin' kill ya," David glowered, while Jasdero nodded in malicious affirmation. "Understand?"

"David, Jasdero, please refrain from threatening the other passengers," a voice drawled, and the twins both turned to see a tall man enter the lounge, most probably part of the odd American group because he too had the same dark skin and golden eyes. "It's not nice, and I wouldn't want to attract any unwanted attention."

The man glanced at Allen, who couldn't help but shudder silently. There was something about the man that weirded him out, and Allen knew that staying in the same place with the newcomer would not help his mental well-being. "Well, gentlemen, it was fun playing with you," the British man stated, standing up from his seat as he collected his earnings.

"Now you've done it, dad!" the teenager loudly groaned. "Allen's going away because you're creepy!"

"That's not a very nice thing to say to your father, Rhode," the tall man scowled.

"Sheryl always creeps people out," Jasdero commented, earning a snicker from his twin. "I bet ya even his mother was uncomfortable whenever he was with her. Damn eerie vibes he gives off."

"I can hear you, you know," Sheryl replied, narrowing his eyes at the blond man. "Don't think I'm going to let this pass, Jasdero."

"Yeah, yeah. Whateva'."

"Hey, Al, how 'bout a bet?" David proposed, determined to get back his money somehow. Allen stared at him for a moment, then released a charming smile.

"Why, I wouldn't mind taking you on, Mister David."

"Call me David. Adding 'mister' makes me sound like a fag," the dark-haired man said, wrinkling his nose. "Anyway, I bet you five hundred dollars that we'll get to Hamunaptra before you."

The smile slipped of Allen's face instantly. "You're looking for Hamunaptra?"

"Damn straight we are," Jasdero smirked, shuffling the deck of cards.

Allen raised a questioning brow. "And who says _we_ are?"

"He does," the twins pointed simultaneously at a certain redhead who was just about to hide under the table. Lavi looked up at Allen's cold glare and chuckled nervously.

"Well…how about it?" he asked, a sheepish smile on his face.

Allen stared at Lavi for a moment, the turned back to the smug faces of David and Jasdero. "Alright, you're on," he stated finally after a few seconds of silence.

"What makes you so confident?" Sheryl inquired.

"Well, what makes you?" Allen retorted, acting cocky despite the fact that the stare the other man was giving him gave him visible goosebumps.

"We've got ourselves a man who's actually been there," Rhode chirped, still sucking on a lollipop as she continued staring at Allen. His confident look visibly dropped as he turned to look at Lavi with a perplexed expression. The redhead returned his gaze and shrugged.

"Oh, what a coincidence because—Agh!" Lavi gasped as a heel came and crush his foot. He grimaced and cleared his throat. "Who's playing in the next match by the way?" he quickly covered up, looking intently at his set of cards.

Allen placed his left hand on Lavi's shoulder heavily. "You've got yourselves a wager, gentlemen," he stated, all the while crushing his friend's shoulder with a stone-hard grip. "I'll deal with you later, Lavi," he whispered, before walking away with his "hard earned" money.

"Why the fuck are you sitting in front of me?"

Allen looked up from the book he was reading and gazed at Kanda with a quizzical brow. "What's the matter? Am I bothering you?"

"Good, at least you're smart enough to figure that one out," the Japanese man snapped. "Now, why don't you prove yourself as a fucking genius and GET THE HELL AWAY FROM ME?"

"I don't need to prove that I'm a genius because I know I am," Allen coolly replied, smirking at the scowling man as he showed no signs of going away. "And I think that for the greater success of this escapade, it would be wise to foster a good relationship between ourselves. Don't you think so, Mister Kanda?" he added, putting down his book as he leaned forward, his elbows resting on the table and his chin nested on his interlaced fingers.

"Fuck no," Kanda growled. "And shit, stop adding 'mister' to my name. It sounds so gay when it comes from your damn mouth."

Allen's eye twitched in annoyance but he ignored the man's remark for the sake of keeping up with his civil façade. He really wanted to punch Kanda to Kingdom come, but Allen knew that doing such a thing would be stupid— not only because Kanda was their guide to the City of the Dead, but also because he would be no match for someone who was once in the military.

"That's too bad because you'll be stuck with us for only god knows how long," Allen added smoothly, still looking at Kanda with a civil smile on his lips. The Japanese man glanced at his face and grimaced shamelessly.

"Ugh, can you try to_ not _be so fucking revolting? Jesus, your smile creeps me out!"

"How rude," Allen chirped, keeping the said creepy smile on his face. "But I don't really mind. I rather believe that hopeless simpletons like you should be pitied and not hated."

Kanda flipped out his middle finger as a reply, and began unrolling his military-issued, khaki duffel bag. Allen blinked, his jaw almost dropping as he stared at the revolvers, pistols, hunting knives, a massive elephant gun, and half a dozen carefully wrapped sticks of dynamite piling up on the table. The last thing to come out of the bag was a long katana, which was encased in a pitch-black sheath.

"Um," Allen started, as he stared at the weapons in front of him warily. "Did I miss something? Are we…are we going to battle?"

Kanda rolled his eyes and grunted. "As if. No, twerp, there's no new war out there, so quit hoping." He took the Japanese sword and absently ran his fingers over the smooth black sheath. Allen watched him, a bit startled by this sudden melancholy. "The last time I was in that place, everyone I was with ended up dead."

If anyone had been looking closely, they might have noticed Allen's face lose a bit of color. His grey eyes took in a slightly bewildered look as he watch Kanda pull the sword out of its sheath and check the blade for any signs of rust. "That old man did a good job in keeping this in good shape," he muttered to himself, seemingly oblivious of Allen's presence.

The British man snapped out of his own trance and cleared his throat loudly, slowly reaching out to touch the blade of one hunting knife. "Um, where did you get these?" he asked, hoping to start a conversation.

"None of your fucking business," Kanda stated flatly, as if that was his default reply. Allen frowned.

"Well, never mind then!" he huffed, scowling as he leaned back against his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. "You're overreacting. What could possibly be in that place that would make you so keen in bringing things like _those_," he asked, gesturing at the sticks of dynamite.

"One word: _Evil,_" Kanda replied, placing the sword back into its sheath. He then took one of the revolvers and started cleaning them, making sure that the barrel was not clogged. "Those goddamn Tuaregs believed that the fucking place was cursed. Called it 'doorway to hell' or some shit like that."

Allen snorted. "I don't believe in fairy tales and hokum, Kanda." He paused, and suddenly leaned forward, his eyes shining with enthusiasm. "But I do believe that one of the most famous books in history is buried out there. The book of Amun-Ra," he added, an excited smile appearing on his face. "It contains all the secret incantations of the Old Kingdom. It's what first interested me in Egypt when I was a child. It's why I came here actually; this trip is sort of like the culmination of a life's pursuit."

"And the fact that it's rumored to be made out of pure gold doesn't in the least bit interest you?" Kanda remarked, giving the younger man a doubtful look.

Allen looked at him with a surprised expression, not really expecting him to know that much. "Wow. So you do know your history," he grinned.

Kanda shrugged as he loaded one of his revolvers. "I know my treasure."

For a moment both of them were silent, Kanda cleaning his guns while Allen returned to his book. And then the younger man, suddenly remembering something, glanced up at the nonchalant Japanese soldier, a blush reddening his cheeks. "Er, Kanda?"

"Sheesh, can't you shut your damn mouth for more than forty-two seconds?" Kanda hissed, annoyed. "What the fuck do you want?"

Allen frowned and hesitated, wondering whether or not it was the proper time to mention it.

"Spit it out, freak."

"Fine!" Allen indignantly snapped. "Why did you do that?"

"Do what?" Kanda inquired, the expression on his face obviously declaring that he was wondering what the hell was going on with his British companion.

Allen's face took in a brighter shade of red before he looked away. "Why did you kiss me?" he muttered, and one could almost see steam coming out of his ears.

And again there was silence.

After a full minute with no reply, Allen glanced back at Kanda, and was appalled to see him carrying on with his gun cleaning duties as if Allen had never spoken in the first place.

"Hey!" he cried, slapping a gloved hand on the table.

"What?" The other looked back at him impassively.

"You didn't answer my question!"

Kanda merely shrugged. "I was about to be hanged, so I thought it wouldn't be _too_ bad of an idea if I ended up kissing a fag freak during my last moments alive," he replied dryly. "At least I'd have something original and hilarious to brag about in hell. I bet Satan never kissed a fucktard like you before."

"…"

Allen gaped at him, a purely wounded expression on his British features.

Kanda stared at him, uncaring. "What?"

"I hate you," Allen snarled before standing up and storming out of there. The Japanese man just stared at the empty seat for a few seconds before resuming his gun cleaning.

"Che. What the hell is his problem?"

The sound of someone snickering caught his attention, and Kanda frowned he saw a man's shadow lurking behind some stacks of luggage. But what really caught his attention was the silhouette of a familiar jester-like cowl.

In a flash, Kanda was out of his seat and had grabbed the mysterious person around the neck, pulling him from his hiding place.

"Ah! Kanda! You're alive! I was so very worried!" Daisya cried out as he struggled against the other man's suffocating grip on his collar.

"Well, well, if it ain't my fucking _buddy_, Daisya," Kanda growled, glaring at his ex-subordinate. "I think I'll kill you," he added, cocking on of his pistols and pressing it against Daisya's chest.

"Ah, don't! Think of my children!"

"You don't have any children."

Daisya paused, a dreamy look on his face. "Someday I might—"

"Shut up," Kanda snarled, pressing the gun harder against the man's skin. "So you're the one leading those creepy Americans. I should've known. So what's the scam, huh? You get them out into the desert, and then you leave them to _rot?"_

The clown-like man sighed. "Unfortunately no," he replied. "These Americans are smart. They only pay me half the amount to get them to Hamunaptra, and the other half when I get them back to Cairo, so I have to stick with them all the way."

"Huh," Kanda grunted, before taking the gun away. Daisya visibly relaxed, and gave the other man a confused expression.

"You never believed in Hamunaptra, Kanda," he started. "Why are you coming back?"

Kanda shrugged. "This British fag saved my neck," he explained in a bored voice. "This is the only way to repay him."

"You mean that white-haired beauty in the pants?" Daisya asked him, flabbergasted.

"Remove the 'beauty' part, replace it with 'fag', and you've got that right," Kanda answered him, putting the pistol in one of the gun-holders that were strapped to his shoulders. Daisya, seeing that the guns were secured, decided to finally act cocky.

"You always did have more balls than brains, Cap'n Kanda."

"Ha, ha," the longhaired man said sarcastically, a deadpan expression on his Asian features. "Well then, let's make it even, shall we?"

"Even?"

Kanda suddenly grabbed Daisya, and with adrenaline-powered strength, he threw the man over the barge's railing. The sound of someone splashing against the river water resounded throughout the boat, followed by Daisya's cursing and shouting.

"You'll pay for this, Kanda!"

"Sounds familiar," Kanda drawled as he walked back to the table where his weapons were. As he began stuffing his guns back into the duffel bag, his eyes caught sight of three pairs of wet footprints on the wooden floor. Instinct told him that there was something wrong, and he looked back at the river and found a small boat attached to the side of the barge. As his dark eyes followed the footprints, he soon realized where they were leading to.

"Oh _shit," _he cursed, immediately grabbing his duffel bag and sword in alarm. "They're going after that idiot beansprout!"

**A/N:** This is for real this time. I'm really going to be gone for 5 days so don't expect updates until I return. I'm not lying so believe me. I _will _update once I get back.

*bug-eyed Betty - means "ugly woman"

And OH! Check out the **Anck-su-namun/The Fourteenth drawing** created by none other than my epic WIN Beta! Her name's Lui by the way. 8D The link to the drawing is found in my account profile! Be sure to praise her about it in your reviews! XD


	4. fiends and fraternity

Chapter IV: Fiends and Fraternity

"In 1860…Cambridge discovered…oh, it was in 1865… oh, bloody hell, you can't even call _that _a kiss, anyway!"

Allen violently threw down his three-inch thick book of _Ancient Egypt: A Complete and Updated Recollection of the World's Very First Civilization _–which he considered as _light _reading, by the way – and walked towards his room's mirror grudgingly, taking a brush from his suitcase on the way. He checked if the buttons on his black, cotton pajamas were all properly closed, and started running the brush through his immaculately white hair. His scowling reflection looked back at him, revealing how distressed the British man was.

_This is bloody stupid, _Allen thought, practically glaring at his own set of lips. _I can't believe I'm being bothered by something as mundane as _this_. It would have been better if I had kissed a mummy than… oh, ugh, that's disgusting. Ignoring that train of thought. _

For a moment he paused what he was doing and placed the comb on the table between him and the mirror. He stared at his reflection, silently tracing the red scar on his face with a gloved finger. "I'm a freak," he muttered, and while his voice held no air of bitterness, one could see a small hint of misery in his silver-grey eyes. "I've always been one anyway. People only look at me because I'm _interesting, _not because they actually like how I look. To everyone else, I'm just a walking piece of proof that God _does _make mistakes."

As the youth further indulged in his existential issues – and actually created an impromptu soliloquy to go along with it – he didn't notice the door open and close ever so slightly.

"…And so it's not really strange if I encounter a lot of spite and ridicule. But still, to be _kissed _by someone I barely know, whose hair is— painfully— better than mine, that's really—" His moment of self pity was abruptly disrupted by the sound of his brush hitting the room's wooden floor. For a second, Allen debated on whether or not he should immediately go and pick it up, or just wait until his rush of gloom-inducing hormones subsided. But then his technical mind got him thinking, and the British man figured that the longer he delayed the action of retrieving his brush, the larger the amount of germs that would start crawling into it, and the more permanently contaminated the whole thing would end up.

Since it was the only brush he had with him, he decided that picking it up now would be the best course of action. He couldn't borrow from Lavi – since that idiot's hair looked liked it hadn't seen a comb in _years _– and hell _no, _he was not going to borrow anything from Kanda (although he was quite curious as to how the Asian man could keep his hair so bloody beautiful all the time).

But later on, Allen realized that had he decided to_ not_ be affected by his hygiene-related OCD, the severity of the following chaotic moments would have drastically decreased.

A strangled cry came out of his mouth as he felt unfriendly hands grab him roughly, and for a moment he thought he was going to lose his twenty-one-year-old virginity the _hard way. _Yes, it was rather embarrassing for a _man _to scream rape, but Allen couldn't think of anything worse. He actually considered the thought of being mummified _alive _more comforting than that of being defiled by a smelly, black-clothed stranger.

He tried to struggle, but the man was _big, _and incredibly strong. Not to mention the fact that he was completely bald, too. And he was _taller _than Allen (this was something he was reluctant to admit, despite the solid evidence set before him). A cold, sharp object was pressed against his throat, and from there on he stopped struggling.

"Where is the map?" the bald man hissed, pressing the blade harder against Allen's skin; it was a miracle that he wasn't bleeding yet. Despite the dire circumstances, Allen couldn't help but inwardly sigh in relief. So he wasn't going to get raped after all. That's good. He was just going to be gutted by this man in black who was apparently interested in the location of Hamunaptra. Well, that wasn't actually good, but it was better than being molested, at least. Allen had always been an optimist, anyway. With an uncle like Cross, he had learned to count his blessings.

"There," he pointed weakly, suffocated by the tight grip the man had on his neck. "And, um, kind sir, would you please loosen your hold on my neck? I'd rather you let go fully, but I do have this feeling that you probably wouldn't oblige to that—"

"Where's the key?" the taller man hissed, in a more irritated tone this time. It was obvious that he was not amused with Allen's nervous babbling.

Allen closed his mouth and frowned – while at the same time trying to calmly ignore the blade that was now so close to his carotid artery. He didn't have a "key", unless the intruder was talking about the key to his room, which was rather dumb as other man was already _inside, _and had already gotten into his room without even needing one. "Key…key…what key?" he asked, a confused look on his face.

His expression soon changed into pure surprise when the blade finally broke through the first layer of his skin. Allen bit his lip to stop a pained whimper as he felt warm, red liquid flow out of his wound and down his pale skin. _Kanda, get your bloody bastardic arse in here, _he called out mentally, and before the white-haired youth could wonder why he was calling to the Asian man in the first place, the door suddenly fell open – literally – and in came a pissed-off Japanese man.

"Goddamit, you're a real wimp," Kanda snarled, two pistols drawn and pointed at the bald man who placed Allen in front of him as a human shield. "You call yourself a man? You look like you're about to wet your pants, beansprout."

Allen had the nerve to roll his eyes, even though he could feel the blade slowly getting closer to his artery. "You're late, prick."

"Hell yeah. I'm glad that I am," Kanda retorted, sneering as he looked at the blood trickling down the other man's neck. "Your skin looks fucking great with blood on it. Maybe I should beat you up more often. The bruises might actually make you look good for once."

Allen opened his lips, about to throw back an insult, but then the man holding him was starting to growl in annoyance. He obviously didn't like being ignored. The British youth suddenly remembered that his life was in danger, and the alarmed look came back into his grey eyes. The Asian man, on the other hand, had his dark eyes narrowed and focused only on the bald captor, while simultaneously loading several bullets into his guns.

Suddenly, the window – which was supposed to be closed – burst open (literally, _again. _Allen vaguely wondered if knocking had suddenly gone out of style) and in came another black-robed man holding up two pistols just like Kanda. This man, however, decided not to pause like the Asian man, and instead fired his guns the moment he saw the two people in the room who were not as lamely dressed as him and the bald man.

"Oh, fuck!" Kanda cursed, jumping away to avoid the bullets and firing at his adversary at the same time. Fortunately for him, not a single bullet entered his body. Unfortunately for the black-robed man, he was greeted with a bullet straight up his forehead. There was no doubt that he was dead.

The bald man was obviously not pleased about the death of his comrade, and Allen decided to take advantage of this distraction in order to escape. His neck was really hurting, but at the least the amount of blood coming out of his wound was minimal. No artery damage _yet. _That would soon change if he didn't get himself away from that blade fast enough, though.

Grabbing a nearby, uncovered candle lamp, Allen set aside all of his pacifist morals and stabbed the still flaming candle into the bald man's eye. Since he was usually against violence and all the death and gore that usually accompanied it, the British man decided to pretend that his assaulter's screams of agony were in fact part of the famous Egyptian burial songs, where the priests had to sing in very high voices, almost as if they were screeching. Of course, Allen had to ignore the fact that this person had as much of a singing voice as a dying chicken, and that he also had blood and wax flowing out of his right eye.

"Let's go, beansprout!" Kanda called out as he ran out of the now broken doorway and into the hall.

"My name's Allen," Allen hissed, annoyed, but followed Kanda anyway, determined to get as far away from the bald man as possible. Another one of the candle lamps was knocked off the table and landed on the blanket, which immediately caught fire. In a few seconds, half of the room was already ablaze, and Allen would've been happier to know that he was out of it, until he realized that he had forgotten something very important.

"The map! The map! We forgot the map!" Allen gasped and tried to run back into the room, forgetting for one frantic moment that half of it was on fire and that there was a really pissed-off bald guy waiting for him inside.

Fortunately, Kanda wasn't going to let him die just yet for two concrete reasons: One, the Asian man wanted to kill the annoying freak fag himself. And when Kanda wanted something, he made sure that he got it. Two, that Brit had the money. Sure, he had borrowed a huge sum from the old geezer to buy his ammo for this trip, but other than that, Kanda would rather have the beansprout sell his body in order to buy food than contribute to their journey's expenses. He was there to _guide/guard _and _not _to babysit.

Allen found himself being dragged rather roughly away by a seething Kanda. "Shut up, beansprout," the longhaired man growled. "Why the hell do you think _I'm _here? I'm fucking more reliable than that damn old piece of rotting paper so quit bitching. I'm technically the _map, _and it's all up in here," he added, tapping his head with the tip of his gun.

"Up where? _There?" _Allen exclaimed, the expression showing just how shocked he was to find out that Kanda thought he actually had a brain. "Oh. My. Dear Lord," he mourned, ignoring the glare the other man was throwing in his direction. "We are _doomed._"

"Shut the fuck up," Kanda hissed, and for a moment it looked like he was planning to shower the white-haired youth with more profanity, but it seemed that whatever Divine Force controlling the world had had enough with his vulgar vocabulary. Before he could continue speaking, bullets suddenly mutilated the wall Kanda was leaning against, making the samurai jump in alarm. He looked around quickly and found their attacker up in one of the terraces of the barge.

"Motherfucker," he snarled, before firing. He hit his target dead on, though that feat seemed to have angered another one of the black-robed men because another shower of bullets came down upon Allen and Kanda.

"Jesus! Just how many _are_ these dipshit fucktards?" the Asian man hissed, narrowly avoiding a couple of bullets aimed at his head. Allen, despite the inevitable possibility of dying, actually had took the time to be bothered about Kanda's language.

"Do you really think that using the good Lord's name in vain can stop those bullets? Can't you wash out your dirty mouth every once in a while?"

If Kanda heard him over the deafening noise of guns, screams, and explosions, then he was really good in pretending that he hadn't. The man took down two more people as if killing them was most natural thing in the world. "Here, hold this and protect it with your life, twerp," he said, shoving his duffel bag of guns and dynamite into Allen's reluctant arms. "You need to try being useful every once in a while." The British man stared at the bag as if it was a venomous snake, but at least he didn't let go.

Both of them ran towards the open deck, where people were jumping over the railing. "Can you swim?" Kanda asked, although his tone clearly indicated that he couldn't care less if Allen drowned. The white-haired man sniffed indignantly.

"Yes, when the occasion calls for it," he replied stiffly.

"Trust me— and it doesn't matter if you do because I don't give a damn— it calls for it," Kanda deadpanned, suddenly lifting up Allen (bridal style) and chucking him into the river with as much care as a serial killer dumping his mutilated victim into a mucky canal. The angry screams coming from Allen's direction made Kanda's mouth twitch into a satisfied smirk. Maybe he should do that more often.

Just as he was about to jump into the river too, another black-robed man suddenly came up from the river and pushed him back into the deck, shoving him against a hard, wooden pillar. _One, two, three…_ Kanda gave the man the chance to punch him three times before executing clean headbutt that knocked the guy off him. He gave the man three punches in the face and one good kick in the ribs before he threw him into one of the blazing rooms. The sound of the man's screams as his skin burned off barely registered in Kanda's mind; to him, it sounded like a cat choking on cheese.

As he was about to go into the water again, his smelly ex-warden suddenly approached him, a frantic look in his eyes.

"Kanda! Kanda! What do we do? What do we do?" he cried out in his thick Arabian accent.

A sudden urge for revenge flowed through Kanda's body and once again, his lips twitched into a smirk. He usually didn't have a sense of humor, but just this once he was willing to try it out. "Wait here," he instructed the man, who nodded at him obediently. "I'll go and get help." And from there, he jumped over the railing, half-tempted to snicker at the fatass warden's stupidity.

The warden stood there for a moment, waiting for the "help" Kanda had promised. And then he looked around and saw everybody jumping overboard, willing to swim through the Nile in order to get away from the guns and the fire. A minute later, he realized that he'd been tricked (this was an excellent example of how slow his mind worked).

In another part of the boat, Lavi was losing his mind.

When the shooting started, the first thing that Lavi did was to rush into his best friend's room and try bring him to safety (he was a great friend that way). But that was no longer the case since his friend had apparently escaped, leaving behind an inferno and a semi-burned man who was groping for the black puzzle box on the floor. The redhead had tried to get it, but a man who was on fire was something Lavi found _really _intimidating, so he had decided to run off instead.

However, when he arrived on the open deck, those weird, dark-skinned Americans where having the time of their lives killing all the remaining black-robed men. The twins were shooting so recklessly, Lavi thought he saw them hit some innocent bystanders, and even the teenaged girl was holding a gun and actually using it. What was more disturbing was the fact that her creepy father was _coaching _her instead of stopping her.

Oh, wait. Scratch that. The most disturbing aspect of this entire display was the big, muscular man who was _not _shooting anyone, but was silently eating a bag of candies instead.

"Christ, those freaks are _so _messed up," Lavi muttered to himself, but before he could give any more comments, another black-robed guy burst out of a room, and this time, _on fire. _Lavi immediately recognized him as the one who stole his puzzle box, and despite the hazard, he began to try to get it back.

The redhead soon realized that he didn't have what it took to defeat an armed man on fire, but thankfully enough, one of the "crazy" Americans decided to lend him a hand – or a couple of bullets – and shot the fiery man down.

"Fuckin' nice, Jasdero!" the voice of David called out over the sound of guns. "Shoulda done that m'self but ah'm pretty busy here!" Jasdero cackled and started shooting again, but since the black-robed people were running out, he and his brother started to target any unfortunate person who came into their firing range.

Lavi stared at them in complete horror for a moment, before coming to the conclusion that staying with the group any longer would not be good for his mental health. "I bid thee _adieu, _jolly chaps," he announced, as he inched closer to the railing. "I got what I wanted," he added, a snide grin on his face as his hand threw the puzzle box up in the air. Oh, _God bless _his quick, pick-pocketing fingers. Who else could steal from a burning, black-robed man who was brandishing a hook-like blade? No one but _Lavi_.

But the redhead didn't really have time to bask in the spotlight of his gigantic ego, because right when he was about to call himself the Most Awesome Handsome Wholesome Magnificent Excellent Sexy Super Charming thief in the whole world, a big explosion took place near the deck, and the force was enough to cut his narcissistic monologue off and push him right over the railing.

People were swimming towards the shore, desperate to get out of the icy cold water of the Nile River. Allen was one of them, especially when the pajamas he was wearing weren't thick and warm to begin with. And there was still the wound on his neck. It had stopped bleeding due to the cold, but it still hurt, and every time Allen would twist his head, spasms of pain would torment him.

When they finally reached the shore where it was dry, Allen finally remembered _everything _that he had forgotten in the boat. "Ugh!" he groaned in desolation, ignoring the snort coming from a certain Asian man walking beside him. "We've lost everything! All of our tools…all the equipment…all my…all my clothes…" Allen's voice dropped to a whimper as he sat down on the sand and stared at the burning barge. Lavi, who had joined them on their way to shore, was sorely tempted to point out the fact that Allen's clothes had probably been fated to burn anyway, since his nightmarish fashion sense was something even Satan couldn't come up with.

"Aww, Al, don't worry." Lavi sat beside the despondent youth and gave him a hug that he didn't really want. "You still have me. And I'm the best. So, no worries," the redhead grinned sincerely, and Allen wanted to punch him for it. (_Really; _at that moment,Allen loved his used underwear more than he loved Lavi.)

"You know, Lavi, if I weren't so bloody tired and cold right now, I'd be using your face as a punching bag."

"Nah, I don't think you would, Al, love," Lavi replied, waving Allen's warning away with a lazy flick of his hand. "You don't really have the balls for something like that any—OW!" Lavi yelped as Allen's fist collided with his cheek. It wasn't strong enough to dislocate his jaw, but it was enough to make one side of his face swell. Allen winced, and grabbed his once again bleeding neck; the punch put too much strain on his wound.

"Say that again, and you'll be getting a kick to your crotch and up your arse, Lavi," Allen threatened, his voice ominous. The redhead gulped, a hand over his swollen cheek, and nodded in understanding.

Allen sighed and massaged his temples in order to calm the headache that came out of nowhere. It was then that he noticed Kanda's unusual, profanity-free silence. Frowning, the British man turned to his Asian… colleague, and was surprised to see a perplexed look on the other man's face.

"Kanda?"

At the sound of his name, the man snapped out of whatever trance he was in and turned his head to glare at the white-haired man. "What?" he demanded rudely, making Allen roll his eyes.

"You were staring off in space, so I was wondering what was wrong," Allen replied. "Were you thinking about what just happened?"

"Why the fuck would I tell you what I'm thinking?" The other man snorted, looking away. "Dream on, you Brit fag. There's no way I'm going to let you get that close to me."

Allen scowled. "As if I wanted to be close to you, anyway. Just standing beside you right now is like a… a nightmare!"

"Then why don't you go and fucking go to sleep so you can have one of your gay butterfly dreams?"

"That's disgusting! Whatever gave you the idea? Oh, _right. Of_ _course_. You know what gay butterfly dreams are because you always have them, don't you?"

"Shut the fuck up. Your existence is worse than the plagues. You're, like, living _proof _that God messes up sometimes."

"Ouch," Lavi commented. "That's rather harsh."

"And do you think I care?" Kanda raised a quizzical brow. Lavi sighed and shook his head.

Allen was glaring at Kanda so ferociously; Lavi could almost feel the hatred radiating off the white-haired man. "_I hate you,_" Allen glowered, and every word was soaked in pure and unadulterated venom. The redhead knew that if he could see into Allen's mind, he would probably end up scarred for life due to the immense amount of mental violence that the British man was fantasizing about just then.

Kanda, however, still looked unrepentant. "Well, what do you know?" He leered. "We've got something in common after all. I hate you too, idiot beansprout."

"Hey, Kanda!" a voice called from the other side of river. Kanda's head turned swiftly towards the voice's direction, and he almost growled as he spotted Daisya jumping up and down like the lunatic he was. "Looks to me like I got all the horses!"

The Asian man rolled his eyes. "Hey, Daisya!" he called back. "Looks to me like you're on the wrong side of the river!"

The clown-like man paused, looked up and studied the position of the stars. Upon realizing that Kanda was right, he began kicking the sand near the water and cursing loudly.

"I said _four! _I only want FOUR! Why the hell is the price so high? You're a cheat! I'm not buying six bloody camels, I'm only buying FOUR!" Lavi almost screeched at the angrily babbling Arabian man who was speaking so fast in his native language that the American redhead couldn't quite keep up. Kanda, who had been standing there for ten minutes, watching the two argue, finally had enough. He smacked Lavi's shoulder roughly, causing the man to let out a surprised gasp.

"Will you just fucking pay the goddamn man?" he snarled.

"Oh for goodness' sake! Fine!" Lavi grumbled, pulling out a wad of bills from his wallet. This was actually Allen's money – since Lavi didn't really have a stable job – but he treated it like his own, anyway, so he was rather stingy about its use. The Arabian merchant suddenly brightened up at the sight of the bills and happily handed over the reigns of four camels in exchange for them. Lavi felt cheated.

"Why the hell do we need to get one for that smelly warden too?" Lavi continued grumbling under his breath, mourning over how light his wallet seemed to be. "I'd rather tie him up and just drag him along the ground. The sand might even be able to rub off a third of his foulness."

"Hell yeah, I'd rather do that too," Kanda replied, choosing one of the camels and taking its reigns. "But your idiot freak friend won some poker game, got lots of cash, and was feeling fucking generous. So there you have it."

Lavi groaned. "As much as I love my little friend, I really hate his bursts of kindness sometimes. People like the warden shouldn't be treated this kindly. And my wallet had to suffer because of him," he sniffed.

"Sheesh, you and your friend are both wimps. Ya know, we could have gotten them for free. All we had to do was give him that beansprout. That camel dealer's so old he probably wouldn't mind fucking a fag before the end of his time," Kanda commented, getting a horrified look from Lavi. The Asian man shrugged impassively.

Before the redhead could say something to defend his friend's honor, a familiar looking white-haired girl in a tight, gorgeous, black Bedouin dress stumbled out of a tent, looking gravely distressed. "Ladies, please!" the girl cried out, as teenage girls ran out of the tent and placed an elegant and rather alluring veil over her face.

The first thing Lavi noticed was that the girl was really beautiful. Especially with that dress and veil complimenting her features. The second thing the redhead noticed was how familiar those snow-white locks were, that blood red scar on the girl's left eye, that flawless British accent, and those bright silver-grey eyes…

He felt something nudge him and found out that it actually Kanda who poked him with his elbow. "Hey," the Asian man slowly started, his eyes stunned and fixated on the girl. "Isn't that…"

The girl suddenly turned to look at him, and Lavi saw her sigh in relief. "Lavi!" she called out. "Help me!"

And then it hit him.

That was no girl.

"Allen?" Lavi exclaimed, running over to his friend, who looked like he was being bullied by the younger girls (who were all, incidentally, somewhat taller than him.) "Why the heck are you dressed like _that?_"

The girls were at first reluctant to leave their twenty-one-year-old doll. But when Kanda started walking towards them, with that same scary glare in his eyes, the girls quickly ducked back into the tent, and screamed for their mothers.

"It's not as if I _wanted _this," Allen cried loudly. His face was so desolate; it was a miracle that he wasn't crying. "I came into this shop and asked where I could buy some comfortable clothes for a journey through the desert, and the lady there looked me over and led me to that tent where all the girls were," he explained. "Then before I could explain that I was _male, _they started swarming at me and pulling off my clothes…even when they discovered I was a man, they still made me wear this…this…"

Lavi's jaw dropped. "Whoa, wait a minute… How _exactly _did they find out that you're a guy?"

Allen shot him a dirty look. "I never took off my underwear, if that's what you're insinuating. Really now, Lavi, do I look like I have _breasts?_"

The redhead shrugged. "I've known some women with flat chests before."

"Whatever," Allen retorted, waving the topic away before they got deeper into Lavi's sex life. He then turned to Kanda, who was still staring at him with a strange expression. Allen narrowed his eyes. "What are _you _looking at?" he snapped, still angry with Kanda over their argument the night before.

Instantly, the Asian man looked away. "I was staring at a fag who's finally come out of the closet," he stated flatly, with an expression on his face clearly stating; "Now you can't get angry at me for calling you a fag, since I'm just stating a _fact._"

Allen glowered. "I'm not a fag!" he hissed.

"Oh, _right,_" Kanda drawled, crossing his muscular arms over his chest. "My bad. I guess you're just a girl now, huh?"

"What? _No!_" Allen recoiled, still scowling. He looked like he was ready to steal one of Kanda's guns and blow the man's brains out (that is, _if _the jerk had an actual brain). But of course he couldn't. Not because he was a British pansy, but because, as mentioned previously, he wasn't really fond of blood and guts, and Allen was not stupid enough to forget that Kanda had once been in the military. It would be too risky to fight him head on.

So technically, Allen had to cheat in order to damage Kanda somehow. But cheating required opportunities. And he had none at the moment.

"Aww, Yuu, why don't you just admit that you were as speechless as I was when we saw how beautiful dear Allen is when he's dressed like a woman?" Lavi teased, at the same time moving behind his white-haired friend so that the punches thrown at him would hit Allen instead (Lavi was, obviously, _intensely_ loyal). Allen didn't mind Lavi's cowardliness this time. In fact, he was greatful that his airheaded friend had decided to act stupid at the right time.

This was the opportunity he'd been waiting for.

"Oh, _really?_" Allen started, a smirk on his face as he artfully ignored the murderous look on Kanda's face. "My, my, that _is _quite a surprise. To be honest with you, your muscular, rude features make it hard for you to be seen as a man with certain…_appetites _for the same sex – except for your hair, since it just fails to make you look manlier – but now I admit that I may have judged you a little too _quickly._"

The smirk on his lips stretched as the mixed embarrassment and agitation became more and more obvious in Kanda's Asian features, and if it hadn't been for the demonic look he saw in the ex-soldier's eyes –as if Beelzebul was strangling his soul – then Allen would have laughed out loud in amusement.

"Shut. The. Fuck. Up."

"Oh, _dear," _Allen continued, ignoring Kanda's snarls and feigning distress as he turned to Lavi. "Lavi, do you really think it's safe to travel with this…this 'man'?" The Brit made sure that Kanda clearly heard the quotation marks in his voice. "I really value my virtue (unlike you, Lavi. Who knows how many people you've bedded these past years?) and so I daresay I am completely against staying in the immediate area of a soon-to-be rapist! Oh Lord, what have I done to deserve such punishment? Have mercy on me!"

Lavi wasn't looking amused. In fact, his face had turned a lot paler and colder than normal. "Um, Allen, cupcake-sunshine-sweetheart-darling, please, er, stop joking around. I, uh, sort of love myself, and you too, so I don't want you to be mummified earlier than necessary," he whispered as he leaned closer to the smug looking Brit. "Seriously, Al, you're going to die if you keep this up."

Allen took another look at Kanda's face and couldn't help but agree. He could see the other man's hands twitching dangerously near his guns. Still, Allen couldn't stop himself from succumbing to his huge urge to smite the Asian man's ego. "Oh, hush," Allen waved Lavi's warning away with a confident flick of his hand. "I don't think he would dare try to kill me. Don't you think it's very _dishonorable_ for someone to kill the person who saved his life? Wouldn't that person be _ashamed_, since he practically _owes _his life to the person who saved him? Am I right, Kanda?"

The pale hands stopped before they reached the pistols, and with a loud growl, they retracted. A victorious smirk appeared on Allen's face. "So," he began, placing his hands on his hips. "How does it feel to have your sexuality doubted? Doesn't feel good, right?" Then smirk fell off his face, and for a moment Kanda was caught off-guard by the sudden change in persona. "Next time you call me a 'fag', you better watch your back," Allen calmly stated ominously. "Because I know how to _bite _back, Kanda. And when I bite, I bite _hard._"

**A/N: **So, here I am again. 8D Sorry for taking so long D: But I had fun in summer camp, so I don't regret disappearing for five days either. XD Hehe.

Okay, so the first part pretty much coincides with what happened in the movie. The SECOND part is pretty much something I added because the idea of having Allen wear a dress (made out of black, semi-transparent silk) was too irresistible, so I applied that idea.

… I don't like this chapter. D: It feels, somewhat, _different. _I didn't have fun while writing this, unlike the previous three chapters. D: I wonder why. T_T

**Lui says: **AWW.D8 I HAPPEN TO LOVE THIS CHAPTER.=)) Allen in a dress, Kanda in denial, Lavi in fail. Beautiful.;w;"

**Claude says: **Really? –didn't notice even if she was the one who wrote it- OwO

Anyway, if you didn't like this chapter too, then I promise to make the next one a better one. (Although I wouldn't be able to update this story sooner because I have to update Handicapped Love first, and I've suddenly become busier because the school year's approaching.) But I'll update as fast as I can!

Thank you, thank you, thank you to all those who reviewed while I was gone! I really love you all! –blows kisses— Please continue reviewing! I'd like to hear from all of you!

Oooh! And Lui made a one-page comic book based on the scene where Lavi and Kanda see girl-like Allen running out of the tent. 8D It's hilarious! Be sure to stop by my profile and check out the link. XD


	5. gifts and grumbles

Chapter V: Gifts and Grumbles

Lavi had never liked camels.

To him they were filthy, smelly, disgusting desert creatures with grotesque bodies, and they made the redhead wonder if their species was in fact the disastrous prototype of llamas. "Ugh, we should have taken horses instead," he groaned, struggling to keep himself balanced on top of his camel's hard hump. Besides being altogether disagreeable, they were also extremely difficult to ride, and one wrong move could be enough to make Lavi kiss his balls goodbye.

"Filthy buggers," he grumbled, as he shifted in his seat for the umpteenth time. "I hate you," he growled, giving the animal's hide a rough kick. The camel belched in protest and farted. "Jesus Christ!" The redhead gasped, immediately covering his nose as he glared at his camel, his personal vendetta against their race growing a dozen times bigger. "You've done that ten fuckin' times! What the hell is the matter with you?" he snapped, his single green eye glowering.

The camel's head suddenly turned to him, as if it understood what Lavi had just asked.

For a moment the redhead stared at the animal's eyes, half-expecting it to miraculously speak up and valiantly defend the pride of its dumb race. On the other hand, he was also expecting it to do something stupid, like burp, for example. And that's what it did.

"Damn this life," he mourned, a desolate look on his face.

"Oh, quit being such a jackarse, Lavi," Allen commented, riding beside his friend. "Camels are one of the few animals who can brave the harsh, unpredictable weather of the desert. They're extremely loyal as long as you treat them properly, and they're pretty cute too," he added, smiling as he patted the head of his own camel gently. "In fact, I think these creatures might be better than you, since you are a spineless coward and they have actual backbones."

"Allen, baby, you know I love you, but please, don't compare me to these gross creatures," he sniffed, offended. "I do have a brain, and their lot apparently doesn't."

"Oh, Lavi," Allen purred in a sweetly insulting voice. "Since when did you grow a brain? Forgive me if I offend you, but if you _did _have a brain, _I _would have noticed," he continued, simply smiling in response to Lavi's wounded expression.

"Che," Kanda snorted as he maneuvered his camel to overtake Allen's ride. "If your friend would just keep his fucking mouth shut for more than ten damn seconds, then maybe his head will realize that it's _empty _and start recruiting new brain cells."

"Please don't talk as if you have a brain too," Allen stated confidently, with an air that announced just how much he believed in what he was saying. "That's being hypocritical, you know."

"Fuck you," Kanda growled in reply, flipping out his middle finger. "Christ, you freaks don't know how to fucking _SHUT UP_."

"Oh dear, I am _truly_ _sorry,_" Allen drawled sarcastically, keeping an annoying smile on his face as he relished Kanda's scowling face. "I didn't know that your case of *_Cerebral Excavation_ was _this_ severe. Your mind is obviously not used to processing words past three syllables."

"I said, _SHUT UP_."

"And because I'm a very compassionate person," Allen continued, ignoring Kanda's guns. "I will make it easier for you. Hypocritical. Hip-o-krit-ee-kal. It means two-faced, just like telling someone that they're stupid when you're stupid too. I repeat, _hip-o-krit-ee-kal_. Say it with me, Kanda, come on. Hip-o-krit—"

A hand grabbed collar of his shirt roughly _— or, rather, dress_—and Allen yelped and grabbed the reigns of his camel in panic. "I'm fed up with your shit," Kanda growled as he kept a tight hold on the British man's collar. Allen struggled to keep himself from falling off the camel, while at the same time trying to pry the Asian man's hands off his loosening clothes. "If you don't know how to shut up, then _I'll _teach you how to fucking shut up. Permanently. Consider it a life lesson you can take to the otherworld. For free."

"Hey!" Lavi exclaimed in his alarm, reaching out from his own camel and making a grab for Kanda's arm. "Stop sexually harassing my Allen!"

"Sexually harassing? What the fuck?" Kanda growled, throwing the redhead one of his favorite I'll-kill-you-too-you-fucking-jackass glares.

"Are you blind?" Lavi snapped, ignoring the man's glare. "Look at what you're doing with his dress! You're fuckin' stripping him already!" He gestured towards Allen, and when Kanda turned to have a better look, he was stunned to see half of the Brit's pale torso exposed. But what scandalized him the most was how he _couldn't stop staring_ at that pink nipple that conspicuously – and inconveniently – peeked out of the black Bedouin dress' collar.

"What are you staring _at_?" Allen's sharp voice pulled Kanda out of his momentary trance, making him quickly avert his eyes. The younger man's narrowed in prying suspicion as he noticed the odd look that chanced upon the Asian man's face while he had been staring at…whatever he was staring at.

"What the hell are you talking about? I'm not staring at anything, beansprout," the older man grumbled a bit too hastily, as he shoved Allen back onto his camel roughly. "Shit, I swear to God – and I barely believe in the guy – that I will beat up your sorry ass after all this."

"Huh," Allen scoffed; hurriedly readjusting his clothes in order to save whatever was left of his dignity. "You're just jealous because I have a brain and you don't."

"Al, love," Lavi interjected, throwing warning glances at his friend. "It wouldn't hurt to dabble in silence every now and then. Really. I care for you and I don't want your sexy ass to perish yet, so, _please, _for the love of everything Egyptian, just. Shut. Up."

"Hmph," Allen sniffed indignantly, pouting rather adorably as he crossed his arms over his chest and averted his silver-grey eyes. "_Fine_. Go and join your fellow brainless, Lavi. You both deserve each anyway. I'll just sit here and talk to my beloved camel. He's smarter than the two of you combined," he added, affectionately stroking the mammal's head. "It's just you and me, my dear," Allen cooed, ignoring the sighs and growls coming from Lavi and Kanda's direction. "Let's make the best out of this trip, shall we?"

The camel turned his furry head and burped.

"Lovely," Kanda sneered.

The biting wind of the cold desert night whipped Kanda's exposed face mercilessly as he led their drowsy party through the desert, making him scowl and shudder at the same time. It would have been wiser to stop and make camp for the night, but Allen was adamant about getting to Hamunaptra first and winning his bet against the Americans. Lavi heartily agreed with him, and even the warden gave his redundant affirmation.

It would've been okay for Kanda too, but the thing was, all the three people who were so eager to keep going were now sleeping like drunken sailors on top of their respective camels. This had granted Kanda the unwarranted burden of making sure that none of them fell off – except for the warden – as they continued with their journey through the desert.

"Damn freaks," Kanda grumbled as he frowned at Allen, who was sleeping quite soundly on his camel. Every once in a while, the British man would shift in his seat abruptly, forcing Kanda to quickly reach out and grab him before he fell off. "Tsk. How troublesome," he hissed as he pulled Allen back into the proper riding position, this time taking care not to give his dress any unnecessary tugs, just in case he would see _that _again.

The wind had caused younger man's bangs to run wayward over his youthful face and for one startling moment, Kanda felt the sudden urge to reach out and brush those stubborn strands away.

_Wait, what the fuck?_

Kanda stopped his hand just in time before it reached Allen's face, and quickly moved it away from the sleeping figure. He stared at his hand for a moment, shocked at what he had _almost _done. "…I need to get the hell away from these guys," he muttered, stowing his hand away as if it were a volatile bomb. "Their faggotry is infecting me, damn it."

For a few minutes Kanda was able to keep his eyes on the horizon; but every now and then his attention would slowly shift back to Allen's peacefully sleeping face. _He looks a lot less bitchy when he's asleep, _the Asian man mused reluctantly. _And holy shit, is he really a guy? With that dress and that hair…fuck._

"Stop thinking about it, goddamn it," he growled, literally slapping his own face to fight away his thoughts.

As he gave his own hand a withering glare, mentally accusing it of mutiny for so easily agreeing to inflict pain on his person, Kanda suddenly experienced that familiar feeling of being watched. The ex-soldier almost eagerly tore his gaze away from Allen – glad to have the distraction before he further delved into his concern over his masculinity – and looked up at a distant ridge, his pupils dilating against the darkness as he squinted and tried to see what was up there. It only half-surprised him to find those black-robed men watching him again. _I knew it,_ he thought, staring at the anonymous group. Ever since he met those robed men in the barge, Kanda was sure that they were connected to the unknown people he saw in the desert three years ago.

_Things are going to get pretty rough soon, _he contemplated, idly fingering one of his pistols.

"Are we there yet?" Lavi whined for the tenth time in ten seconds. Kanda growled, pulling out one of his revolvers and pointing it in the frustrating redhead's direction.

"One more fucking word and I'll blow your brains out."

"Do you even _know _the right way to Hamunaptra?" Allen questioned somewhat irritably, frowning as he stared at the barren landscape. There was no sign of an ancient city anywhere. It was nearly dawn, yet the wind was uncomfortably cold and dusty. Allen was partially grateful of how his dress managed to trap his body heat somehow (he would never admit _that _one aloud) yet he couldn't stop himself from shivering every time an icy breeze licked his exposed neck and collarbone. "I should have never left the map in the room," he groaned. "Now we're forced to trust that thing you call a brain and it's leading us to nowhere."

"Stop acting like a know-it-all," Kanda glowered. "We're not there yet but we're close. I'm sure of it."

"And how can you be so sure?" The warden spoke up as he tried to swat the flies that were flying relentlessly around him.

"Look down, fatass," Kanda retorted, pointing to the desert floor. All of them looked down at the same time and identical horrified expression appeared on the other three's faces as they witnessed dozens of human skeletons sticking out of the ground, picked clean by vultures and bleached white by the rabid desert sun. Some of them, Allen noted, looked like they were still trying to crawl out of the sand. "There's your proof. All those skeletons are the remains of the idiots who got close to Hamunaptra but failed to arrive alive," Kanda paused for a moment and moved his eyes away from the ground. "Some of my colleagues are probably in there somewhere," he added, in a lower voice.

There was silence after that.

However, the approaching sound of horses soon caught their attention, and Allen narrowed his eyes as he spotted the Americans coming out from behind a nearby dune. "Tsk," he clicked his tongue in disdain. "I wanted to get there before them."

"Don't get disappointed yet, beansprout," Kanda retorted. "The race is just about to begin."

"Huh? What do you mea—"

"Good morning, my friend!" A voice cut Allen off, and the white-haired man turned his attention to the same man that had talked to Kanda across the river a few days ago.

"Who the fuck are you talking to, Daisya?" Kanda growled, obviously not happy to see the clown-like guide. "I'm pretty sure that I don't have any double-crossing friends."

Daisya rolled his eyes. "Well, sorry for that. I just remembered that you don't have _any _friends at all, so maybe I thought maybe I could act as the Good Samaritan, and _pretend _to be your friend."

"Good Samaritan my ass," the Asian man snapped. "You're like a new, more treacherous breed of Judas, for motherfu—"

"Ahem," Allen loudly cleared his throat. "I am terribly sorry to interrupt your friendly chat, but may I know what you are doing here?"

"Yeah, you heard 'im, Daisya. What the hell are we doin' here?" David called out. "I ain't seein' any City of the Dead. Are you seein' any City of the Dead, Jasdero?"

"Naw," the other twin replied. "Just sand, rocks, an' ooh! More sand!"

"Patience, good sir. Patience," Daisya replied, sighing in resignation. It was pretty obvious that he was having a hard time in the Americans' company.

"Remember our bet, Allen!" David suddenly exclaimed. "First one in the city. Five hundred bucks in cash!" Allen merely smiled, a self-assured expression on his face.

"Ready your wallets, gentlemen," he said calmly. "Because I will _not _lose."

"Ha! We'll see about that!" Jasdero sneered, tightening his grip on his horse's reigns. "Hey you, Mister Guide! You'll get a hundred bucks if you help us win that bet! So ya better try hard!"

"Oh, my pleasure," Daisya answered, smiling as he glanced at Kanda, who looked like he was going to seriously shoot down his own camel because it started farting for no reason at all. "Hey, Kanda," the jester-like man sneered. "Nice camel."

"Hell, it's _so _nice, I'm tempted to just blow it's brains out here and now so that it'll get to camel heaven faster," Kanda growled, his scowl deepening as his camel released another long, disturbing fart. "Damn it, I am seriously going to pulverize this fucking camel."

"Don't be an arse," Allen snapped. "It's not like it's doing it on purpose. They can't control things like that. Right Mister Camel?"

The camel farted.

"Right," Allen continued, looking as if he and the camel had come to an understanding. "So, Kanda, why don't you stop reaching for your guns and tell us what the bloody hell we're doing out here?"

"Shut up and just get ready for it," Kanda stated, staring at the brightening horizon with a serious look.

"Ready for what?" Allen slowly asked, suddenly feeling the suspense and majesty of the moment.

"We're about to be shown the way."

And as if on cue, the first rays of the morning sun pierced through the dull veil of the lingering night, showering the world with its warm, burnished light as it slowly ascended to the heavens. If it had been in any other place, the rising sun would have been a commodity, a phenomenon usually ignored by the majority. But there, in the middle of the Sahara, the rising sun was unveiling one of the most endearing mysteries in the world.

"Oh. My. Lord."

Allen's jaw dropped as his silver-grey eyes witnessed the magical transformation that appeared right in front of him.

The air in front of the sun seemed to ripple, the way water moved when disturbed by multiple pebbles falling onto its surface. This enchanting event continued for more than ten seconds before Allen's eyes soon noticed something else.

Buildings.

Ancient Egyptian infrastructures were appearing out of thin air, slowly being revealed as the ripples started to decrease.

The British man felt his heart skip a beat as he now stared at the city he'd been dreaming off ever since he was a little boy. He could feel the adrenaline rushing madly through his veins. He could feel a sudden burst of energy suddenly awaken within him.

Allen had never felt so _alive._

"Hi-YAH!"

Without warning, the white-haired man abruptly swatted his camel with his whip, startling the poor animal and making it sprint in surprise. "LET'S GO!" Allen exclaimed excitedly, laughing airily as he held on for dear life.

"That idiot," Kanda grumbled before whipping his own camel. "Charging like a maniac, what the hell…"

Soon both groups were racing through the desert, determined to get to the ancient city before the other did. Kanda and Daisya were neck-and-neck, both of them ahead of the racing mob. "The hell I'd let you win, Daisya!" Kanda hollered over the thundering sound of hooves.

"I was about to say the same thing to you!" Daisya shouted back, and then took out his camel whip and began hitting _Kanda _with it.

"What the fu—Ow! Shit, stop tha— Ow! Motherfu— Ow! That's it," Kanda hissed as he roughly grabbed Daisya's hand. "Eat dirt, Daisya," he jeered before pushing the man off his camel.

"Oof!" The Turkish man groaned as he hit the hard, desert sand. Allen passed by him, a smug look on his jubilant face.

"Serves you right," he stated as he rode by.

Kanda's head snapped to the side as he saw Allen's camel catching up to him. "Oh no, you don't," he grumbled, roughly kicking his camel's hide. The poor animal whimpered as it forced itself to speed up.

"Don't do that!" Allen angrily snapped at him, making Kanda idly wonder if the man possessed human-animal telepathy. "It hurts them whenever you kick them! Stop it!"

"Che," Kanda snorted, digging his heel sharply into his camel's skin in defiance.

"You are so…ugh," Allen grumbled, his previous moment of euphoria gone. "There isn't even a proper word that could efficiently describe your jerkaholic, arsaholic nature."

"Jerkaholic ain't a word," Kanda retorted, rolling his eyes. "Neither is arsaholic."

"Wow, I thought you'd never notice," the younger man scoffed. "Seeing how inept your brain is when it comes to processing words." He then called out a couple of weird, animal-like sounds, making his camel suddenly speed up, even outdoing Kanda's desperate steed. Kanda was left behind, his mouth gaping as he silently wondered how on earth Allen managed to make his camel run so fast without even giving a single kick.

"Damn beansprout," he mumbled under his breath, as he followed the other man into the ancient city. "Fucking freak speaks camel. How messed up is that?"

"That's the statue of Anubis," Allen started once again in his know-it-all voice. "Its legs are deep within the ground. According to Bembridge scholars, that's where we'll find the Golden book of Amun-Ra."

"Yeah, and I'm just _so _interested in what Burpbridge scholars say," Kanda drawled sarcastically as he tied a rope around a nearby pillar. "Screw the lecture, beansprout, just lead us to the fucking book already."

"Lavi, you're supposed to catch the sun with that! Don't play with it!" Allen called out to the redhead as he successful ignored Kanda's bastardic advances. Lavi gave him a lame salute in reply, and started properly polishing an old brass mirror.

"What's with the big-ass shitty mirrors, freak?" Kanda hissed, obviously annoyed by Allen's previous indifference.

Allen sighed in exasperation, knowing that there was no way he could continue ignoring Kanda when the man was purposefully butchering his beloved Egyptian culture. "_Ancient _mirrors, Kanda," he replied indignantly, placing his hands on his hips as he gave Kanda an irritated glare. "They involve a neat ancient Egyptian trick, but oh, don't worry; I won't torture your empty head any longer by actually explaining what the trick is all about."

"Whatever," was the only reply that came from Kanda's direction. Allen's frown deepened; it was unusual to get such a short, profanity-free response from the Asian man especially after Allen had just insulted his intelligence (or what was left of it). _What's his problem? _He wondered, feeling slightly disturbed about the sudden change in the other's attitude. _Too much sun perhaps?_

What Allen didn't know was that Kanda was too distracted by the British man's pose to be able to think of a proper retort. He had seen the beansprout with his hands placed on his hips before, and Kanda wasn't that disturbed by it, but now that Allen did it again, and this time in a _dress, _the phenomenon created was enough to stun the words off his mouth. _Holy shitting Jesus, _he thought as he continuously blinked and tried to block out the lingering image in his head. _This is seriously fucked. What the hell am I thinking? _

"Allen, I'm done!" Lavi exclaimed loudly, snapping Kanda out of his thoughts before he started questioning his sexual stability. "What do we do next?"

"Brilliant!" The white-haired man exclaimed in response. "Since the preparations are complete, we can now go inside!" Immediately, Allen clamped his mouth shut, a dark blush rising up his pale cheeks. He didn't mean to squeal like that, but he was just too excited. And the you-are-a-total-fag look Kanda was throwing at him wasn't helping his shattering ego either.

"_Anyway,_" he coughed. "We better get going. I'll seriously kill myself if the Americans get the book before us."

"That doesn't sound like a bad idea," Kanda mused, smirking at Allen's glare. "But yeah, I don't want to be bested by those dark-skinned freaks," he added. "I don't give a damn about gold books, but I do give a damn about losing."

Allen huffed, offended by the man's remark. "Oh, you and you're insufferable prid—Oof!"

The younger man let out a yelp of surprise as a small, leather bag was shoved against his chest roughly. "Wha…? What the bloody hell is this?" he demanded, giving the bag a suspicious expression as he opened it to check if there was any dynamite inside. "This better not be a prank because I…I will…"

Allen's words died down his throat as he stared at the complete set of excavating tools on his hands.

"You're welcome, freak," Kanda drawled sarcastically as he turned away and inserted the rope into the crevice. The British man merely blinked for a few moments before looking up and staring at the Asian man in astonishment.

"W-wait…_you _aregiving this to _me_?"

"If you don't want it, then give the fucking thing back," Kanda snapped, getting vaguely annoyed by the other one's reaction. Couldn't he just say a fucking 'thank you' and get over the damn thing?

"No!" Allen cried out in a sudden of burst possessiveness as he tightly held the bag against his chest. "I mean," he paused, an ecstatic smile appearing on his face. "Thank you, Kanda. I love it!" The white-haired man began to eagerly inspect the bag, touching every single tool with awe and respect. "How ever did you manage get something like this?"

"I bought it, _duh_," the Asian man grunted. "I'm not your thieving best friend over there," he added, pointing a thumb at Lavi's general direction before he grabbed the rope and slid down into the crevice, determined to get into a darker place where he couldn't get a good look at Allen's womanly form. _Fuck, how can he smile like that? It's so…so…ugh, damn this life._

"Don't you dare look up," Allen threatened. "If you do, I swear I'll do something drastic."

"Yeah, I'm just _dying _to see what's under your skirt," Kanda jeered. "Shut up, beansprout. I'm not interested in seeing your underwear. Show me the end of the world instead, and I'll be a lot happier."

"How rude," the British man sniffed indignantly as he jumped off the rope and gracefully landed in the unlit room. "I bet my underwear is better than yours anyway."

"_Why _are we even having this conversation?"

"Oh, what the fuck is that god-awful stench?" Lavi whined as he climbed down the rope. "It stinks to high heaven here! Where is _that _smell coming from?" The redhead started sniffing around, determined to find the source of the vile aroma and do something about it. His nose led him to his right, where he expected to find a couple of dead rats, but instead found the warden.

Lavi immediately stopped sniffing. _Oh. _

"You do realize that we are standing inside a room that no one has entered in the last four thousand years?" Allen said breathily as he looked around the darkness with an awed expression; one could almost see a vision of Ancient Egypt being revived in his English mind.

"There is nothing here," the warden grumbled, oblivious of how Lavi was slowly inching away from him. "I don't see any treasure."

"You're all welcome to my share of cobwebs," Kanda nonchalantly announced, his eyes glancing cautiously around the dark room as he waved his torch around in order to reveal more of the room. "Should have brought more damn torches—Ow!" The Asian man looked down at what his foot hit. "Fuck! What the hell is that rock doing there?"

"It's there because it's a rock, Kanda," Allen sighed as he quickly walked towards a brass, mirror-like disk he spotted, which looked exactly like the other ancient mirror outside. He brushed off the cobwebs and positioned the disk in order to catch the ray of light coming from the outer mirror.

"And then there was _light_."

The sun's rays harnessed from the outside mirror struck the metal disk in the room, and from there it quickly shot around the chamber, hitting against all the disks that were installed in the room. Soon the entire place was lit up brightly, as if a dozen torches were hung against the walls.

Lavi whistled. Kanda looked around, idly impressed. "That _is _one neat trick," he murmured.

"Oh, my," Allen gasped, his eyes widening in amazement. "It's a preparation chamber."

"A preparation for what?"

The British man flashed the Asian man an eerie smile. "For entering the _after life._"

Kanda immediately tensed, his hands pulling out two of his revolvers quickly as he looked at his surroundings more suspiciously. Lavi just laughed and gave him a friendly pat on the back.

"Relax, Yuu," he said. "Mummies, my friend. This is where they make the mummies."

"This is where you'll end up if you don't stop calling me by my first name," Kanda snarled, pointing his gun threateningly at the redhead. Lavi merely released a light-hearted chuckle in reply, knowing that Kanda wouldn't really follow through with his threats. Still, the redhead took the extra precaution of staying close to his smaller friend just in case he needed a human shield.

They followed Allen into a narrow passageway, pausing every now and then as he stopped to read the hieroglyphs on the walls for directions. After moving through countless confusing corridors, they soon found themselves inside another chamber where two enormous feet where mounted on a hieratic studded pedestal.

"The legs of Anubis!" Allen cheered, barely stopping himself from jumping in excitement. "The secret compartment should be here somewhere…"

"Finally," Lavi groaned, leaning against a wall as he massaged his legs gently. "I thought that labyrinth was going to go on for—"

"Shh!" Kanda hissed suddenly, making the other three look at him with puzzled expressions. "I can hear something. Listen!"

True, there was a strange sound coming from the unlit corridors. It was a creepy and disturbing noise, as if there were hands desperately clawing on the walls. Allen gulped and unconsciously moved closer to Kanda, finding comfort in his armed presence. "What is that?" he whispered throwing a wary look at the darkness.

"Shut up," Kanda replied as he cocked his guns. The sound was getting louder and it was moving towards their direction. "Oh fuck this," the Asian man grumbled, abruptly grabbing Allen's arm and pulling him to a shadowed area by the statue.

"Wha…?"

"Just shut your mouth and hide," the older man growled, moving himself into the hidden corner as well, while Lavi and (unfortunately) the warden imitated him.

"Shouldn't we just try to get out instead of staying in here?" Allen silently protested, thought it occurred to him that Kanda didn't know the meaning of "fear" – then again, Allen concluded, he didn't know the meaning of most words either.

Whatever was causing the strange sound was getting closer now, coming from the other side of the statue. Thick drops of sweat were progressively flowing out of Allen's pores, creating a skin-borne waterfall as he waited in silence for the worst to come. Yes, he knew he shouldn't be this scared, since he didn't believe in supernatural stuff like undead mummies. But Hamunaptra gave off an uncanny atmosphere, and he just couldn't help but feel scared. It was as if the city itself was trying to drive people away with fear.

Closer.

He looked up slowly at Kanda's fierce expression, finding himself drawn by that fearless yet strangely reassuring look in the man's dark eyes. It probably wouldn't hurt if he moved a little closer, would it?

And closer.

As he shifted slowly, trying to be as subtle as possible in his actions, an unusually scent entered his nostrils. A confused expression appeared on the British man's face as he leaned closer to his Asian companion and inconspicuously sniffed. _Lotuses_? he wondered, a bit perturbed about _why _Kanda smelled like a flower of all things.

Unfortunately – or maybe fortunately; Allen couldn't tell – the ex-soldier leaped out of their concealed location before Allen could successfully press his body against him. Pistols were swiftly drawn and aimed at whatever being was approaching the other side of the statue.

"Die you—wait, what the…?" Kanda paused, a clearly disappointed scowl on his face as he recognized the Americanized pistols, the dark skin and the golden irises. He really did expect mummies.

"Ya scared the bejeesus outta us, Kanda!" David cried, his gun-wielding hands relaxing faintly. But it didn't look like he had any plans of lowering them.

"Same here," Kanda retorted, still pointing his pistols at the Americans. "What the hell are you fucktards doing here?"

The twins grinned, their grip on their guns tightening. "This statue's ours," a feminine voice echoed from the darkness, and out came Road with her father. "So beat it," she added as she sucked loudly on her lollipop.

"I don't see your names on it, brat," Kanda growled. "Fuck off. We got here first."

More footsteps came, revealing Daisya, the unnamed muscular man, and one tall, longhaired woman, each of them holding guns in their guns. "Five against one," Daisya mused, grinning at Kanda as he pointed his pistol at him. "Your odds are not so good, Kanda."

"I've had worse."

"Yeah, me too," Lavi suddenly interjected, pointing two pistols at Daisya's smug face. "But maybe you should start counting again, because it's five against three," he added, nodding at the warden's direction, who pulled out his own gun and aimed it at the Americans.

"You had a gun?" Allen incredulously asked his one-eyed friend. "Since when did you get the money to buy one?"

"Nah, I didn't," Lavi replied casually. "I just borrowed these from Yuu."

"Huh? What the fuck? I never lent you any!" Kanda stared at him in shock for a few moments before realization fell upon his face. "Oh shit," he mumbled, looking down at the empty gun holsters on his waist. "_Shit, _how the hell did you manage to steal _two _of my guns with me noticing?"

"The Almighty blessed us with different talents, Yuu ol' boy," Lavi grinned.

"Don't call me that!"

"Then let's make it six against three," Road interrupted, taking out a gun of her own. This one however, had less of an American design and leaned more towards the Russian. "Look familiar, Kanda?" she asked snidely as she waved the pistol around, drawing a growl from the Asian man's direction. "It should, 'cause it was yours before you traded it for my digging tools over there," she said, pointing at the leather bag in Allen's possession.

The British man let out an audible gasp at this unexpected piece of information. He turned to Kanda, complete disbelief etched on his face. "Are you bloody serious?" he asked, the shock dripping thickly from his voice. "_Kanda_ did that for _me?_"

"Don't get the wrong idea, beansprout," the older man hissed, "I got it for you because you just wouldn't stop bitching around. You've been damn unbearable ever since you lost your own tools."

"I wasn't bitching!" Allen sniffed in offense. "It was because you were putting making a special effort to be more bastard-like and airheaded than usual."

"Uh, _no_, from my point of view, you were being the bitch and the freak you were born to be— and you're overdoing it," Kanda retorted.

Allen snorted, crossing his arms over his chest in defiance and possessively pressing the bag of tools against his chest with the same action. "Huh. I'd _love_ to see things from _your _point of view, but pardon me, I can't get my head that far up my arse."

"Why you ungrateful little—"

"Uh, guys," Lavi interrupted, loudly clearing his throat. "I'd hate to break off your love quarrel an' all, but there are guns pointed at us, if you haven't noticed."

"Yeah, an' they're loaded with bullets too! Right, Jasdero?" David snickered.

"Uh," Jasdero paused and had to check his gun, not really sure if it had bullets in it. "Right, David! They're loadad awright, and we're going to blow yer brains out!" the blonde twin exclaimed, relieved that his gun had bullets, and the two siblings let out a round of maniacal laughter.

"Can we kill them now, daddy?" Road asked her father sweetly as she aimed her gun directly at Kanda's pissed off face.

"Of course, my dear," Sheryl smiled gently at his daughter as he took out his own gun. "But remember; don't hit any of the walls, okay? It'll be troublesome for daddy if some of the hieroglyphics got damaged."

"Yeah, yeah, I'll remember. I'll hit only the pissed Jap and the stupid looking redhead," she smirked, licking her lips in anticipation. "But don't hit Allen, okay? He's too hot to die," she added, throwing a wink at Allen's direction.

The British man rolled his eyes, but as he did, he noticed a small fissure on the floor.

A sudden idea popped in his mind.

"I'll fucking kill all of y—"

"Now, now, children," Allen interjected suddenly, cutting off Kanda's sentence. He placed one gloved hand over Kanda's guns and pushed them down slowly, trying his best to ignore the death glare that was nearly piercing his soul. "Let's be nice. If we are going to play together, we must learn to share," he continued, turning and giving Kanda a hard look. "There are other places to dig. Now stop being stupid for once and come on."

The Asian man stared at him for a few seconds, torn between shooting Allen between the eyes, or taking out one of his dynamite sticks and shoving it down his throat. But in the end, Kanda just grunted angrily in resignation and grudgingly stowed his guns away. "Fuck you."

"God bless you too," Allen replied, craftily hiding the victorious smirk that threatened to come out of his face.

**A/N: **Gah, I'm sorry for taking so long! ;w; It was so hard to find a writing muse, and I was sort of distracted these past few days. "orz

Anyway! It's finally done! But oh shit, I don't like it. D8 I'M SO SORRY TO ALL THOSE I DISAPPOINTED PLEASE DON'T KILL ME YET, I STILL WANT TO LIVE AND WITNESS THE CONTINUATION OF DGM. ;w;

The muse I found just wasn't good enough. TT_TT Maybe I should go to Egypt or something? Or maybe get lost inside some pyramid so that I'll get a better feel of the story? D:

IDK, I don't have enough money to go to Egypt anyway. =_=" /"orz

***Cerebral excavation** – a fictional disease that involves the "complete absence of the cerebrum"

Please review. DD8 It may be too much to ask, and a bit selfish, but I really get inspired whenever I'm reading your fun reviews! I'm serious! While I was writing this chapter, the Reviews page was opened in a tab, and I kept glancing at it every time I finished a paragraph!


	6. humor and humanity

**A/N: HAPPY YULLEN WEEK EVERYONE! In honor of my favorite pairing (and as a birthday gift to my beloved Kanda as well) I have updated earlier than I originally planned! XDD**

Chapter VI: Humor and Humanity

It was amazing what crazy things one could think of, just by simply staring at a small crack on the floor.

"According to these hieroglyphics, we should be directly underneath the statue," Allen stated, his voice hoarse as he tried to hold back his mounting excitement. "We should come out right between his legs!"

Both Kanda and Lavi simultaneously ceased beating the ceiling with their mattocks, and shot Allen strange looks, which then caused the younger man some perplexity. He first stared at Kanda, hoping to get some enlightenment; only to realize how useless his efforts were given that the expression on the Asian man's face was not very far from the word "inconceivable." When he moved on to Lavi, Allen mentally cringed at his best friend's expression, which blatantly announced that the redhead had an obviously lewd thought in mind.

"Right _between_ his legs, huh?" Lavi purred in a highly illicit tone of voice as he mischievously wagged his eyebrows at his white-haired, a feat the younger man did _not _appreciate. "_No wonder _you're so excited, Al, baby."

The white-haired man blinked once. Then twice. And finally, on the third time, the gravity of his previous statement struck him like the droppings of a particularly large seagull with absurd defecation routines. A large pink blush immediately covered his face, forcing Allen to swiftly look away in mortification.

"Stop being a pervert, Lavi," he grumbled, glowering as he almost threw a hammer at his best friend's smug expression. It was fortunate that he didn't, though, because it was a rather expensive-looking hammer, and it would have been such a waste if Lavi's failure-inducing germs tarnished it. "Can you just concentrate on the plan, please?"

"Yeah, yeah," the redhead replied, casually waving Allen's glare aside with a lazy flick of his wrist as he resumed his upward digging. "Dig from under Anubis' legs, steal the book when the bloody Americans are asleep, then rub our victory on their shitty faces by parading the book around while we're completely naked and covered with honey that they'll have to lick off us—"

"What the _fuck_ are you saying, you sick idiot?"

"Lavi, _please_ try not to incorporate your twisted sexual fantasies into our group's stratagem," Allen sighed, rubbing his temples in an exasperated manner that revealed just how often he was forced to endure his friend's bizarre fetishes. "If you insist on demonstrating that your brain is emptier than a church on weekdays, then I will personally make it my life's mission to give you first-hand experience of how it feels to be mummified. _Alive._"

"Count me in, beansprout," Kanda stated, flipping his middle finger at Lavi as the latter threw him an annoying grin. "Even if I don't know a thing about mummifying a person, I wouldn't mind helping you shut _this_ idiot up for good."

"Tsk, tsk," Allen huffed, throwing the Japanese man a disdainful look as he planted his hands on his hips in a truly obnoxious way. "_Of course,_ you don't know," he drawled, smirking inwardly at the little veins that were starting to appear on Kanda's forehead. "In fact, I am starting to think that you don't know a lot of things. Now, since I'm a _good_ and _compassionate_ person, I will try my very best to help you out. Let's start with the easiest thing, shall we? Close your eyes and concentrate. I am now going to ask you a very difficult question. _What is your name?_"

"What the fuck?" Kanda growled, glaring at the smug-looking Brit. "How come I'm the one being targeted by your bitchiness? Shouldn't I get a bit of gratitude instead, since I just volunteered to help you kill your best friend?"

Allen crossed his arms over his chest and raised perfectly curved white eyebrow, which annoyed the Japanese man further. "Uh-huh? Why the bloody hell should I be grateful? You just volunteered to help _kill _my best friend_, _for goodness' sake! Tell me, sir, are senile? Do you have a terribly empty feeling in your skull? Because, and I am _so_ sorry about this, I think your brain has deserted you."

"You arrogant little know-it-all," the Asian man hissed, pointing his mattock's sharp edge at Allen threateningly. "You keep acting like you're the smartest person in the world. Listen up, sucker. I've experienced lots of things, most of which you could only dream off or read from your stupid books. I know more than you do when it comes to surviving in life, so stop acting all high and mighty."

"Hmph," Allen snorted, giving Kanda a genuinely unconvinced look. "Well, if that's the case, then go ahead and tell me everything that you know. That should take about," he paused and frowned slightly, pondering on how long it would take for Kanda to disseminate all the knowledge he claimed to have. Finally, after almost half a minute of contemplating, Allen's face brightened up and turned to face Kanda with a self-satisfied expression. "_Ten_ seconds."

"I'll fucking kill you."

"Be grateful, for once! I added additional seven seconds out of the goodness of my heart, you know!"

"You are _so _dead, you little—"

"Hey, hey, hey!" Lavi interrupted, placing an arm between the two in order to stop a potentially dangerous situation full of bloodshed and gore. "Take a break, you two, and put a lid on the *baloney, sheesh. Allen, you were the one blabbering about concentrating and shit – hey, _Kanda,_ dude, stop reaching for your guns please – but _you're _the one not concentrating. Can we just finish the job first before ya *bump each other off?"

"Che." The Asian man turned away from Allen and started hitting his mattock against the stone ceiling above them, but this time with a sort of malicious fervor as he imagined it was the British man's face he was hitting instead. Allen was doing the exact same thing, or maybe he was _trying _to do the exact same thing, but with his short stature and thinner arms, he couldn't quite hit with the same level of malice without looking pathetic.

Lavi sighed in relief. Even if the tension was still there, at least they weren't pointing their mattocks at each other any more. With the problem solved, the redhead finally began to notice something strange.

"Huh?" Lavi looked around and realized that the smelly warden was nowhere to be seen. _So that's why the air seemed so fresh all of a sudden, _he mused, a wide grin appearing on his face. Not a single vibe of concern came off his body, and it was completely understandable especially when it involved someone as unpleasant as the warden. He could have gotten lost or been eaten by dung beetles for all Lavi cared. _But if that smelly fella finds some shiny stuff, _he thought, licking his lips in anticipation, _then I won't mind being friendly towards him._

The aforementioned warden was indeed participating in a small, treasure-hunting escapade of his own, as he squeezed his fat body through the dark corridors that were barely lit by the flaming torch he had with him. He had no idea where he was going, but at least he had a sense of direction good enough to lead him back to the exit.

The fat man soon found himself inside another dark chamber, this time with a huge mural wall inside. As the warden approached the mural, he noticed that there were things embedded on the pharaoh's figure. Upon much closer inspection, the warden realized with growing excitement that the embedded objects were in fact scarab-like stones made out of blue gold. "These will sell for a hefty price in the black market," he snickered, smiling a yellow, toothy grin as he jimmied one out and placed it inside his pouch.

"A'right, let's tear it apart!" David exclaimed riotously as he waved his crowbar around and began hitting the crevices on the secret compartment. "Jasdero, gimme a hand 'ere! This thing's pretty *hardboiled!"

"Why don't we just blow the thing up? That'd be friggin' swell don't ya think?" the blonde twin cackled as he took his own crowbar and started hitting the other crevices as well.

"Idiots! Stop this at once!" Sheryl snapped, pulling the two men away from the compartment roughly. "Are you two really as stupid as you look?" he hissed as he pushed the siblings aside. "Seti the First was no fool. He wouldn't leave the Book without any defenses." The man turned to the hired diggers who were all inching away slowly, fear and dread conspicuous on their tanned faces. "Let the diggers do it," he finalized, stepping aside to a corner as far away from the compartment as possible.

"You heard my daddy. Get your useless hides movin'!" Road ordered in sloppy Egyptian while she continued sucking on her lollipop.

The diggers hesitated, and tried to move even farther away. Just as they thought it would be wise to make a run for it, the sound of something hard cracking and crumbling to pieces caught their attention.

"Now, now, Skin. Don't kill them yet," the pretty, longhaired woman stated idly, tugging on the huge, muscular man's sleeve lazily. "We still need them to do their jobs for us. I don't want to ruin my nails holding a shovel." The man called Skin grunted in protest and looked reluctant to follow the girl's orders, but one look from Road made him step away from the frightened diggers who had just been treated to a show that displayed how skilled he was at crushing rocks with his bare hands. The bulky man didn't want his candy supply to be cut off.

"C'mon, move it!" David and Jasdero both hollered, grinning in a manic manner as they pointed their pistols at the hired Egyptians. "Start diggin' ya diggers, or we'll blow yer heads off!"

Stuck between a rock and a hard place, three of the diggers decided to face the less immediate danger and approached the compartment, their crowbars at hand. The rest, together with Daisya, backed away as far as the chamber would allow. Sheryl continued barking out orders in Egyptian, and at the same time discreetly backing away, his usually stoic features now twisted into a strange form of anxiety.

"Hey," Road whispered as she pulled her two twin cousins farther from the statue. "Don't try any of your stupid ideas if you don't want to get hurt," she whispered. "When my dad says that something bad will happen when you open that thing, something bad will _really _happen. So don't even think of charging in there while those morons are still digging."

"Yeah, yeah, don't ya preach to us *Dumb Dora" David grunted, rolling his eyes. He obviously didn't like having the mere teenager scold him. "Whateve'. We saw the look in yer daddy-o's eyes, Road. We're not _that _stupid."

Sheryl's voice had now escalated from mere barking to nearly hollering as he urged to the three Egyptian diggers to hurry up. "*_Feni!" _he screamed, and one could almost see the veins throbbing on his forehead. "_Feni!_" The diggers pushed against the crevices harder, using their crowbars to latch onto the seams and started pulling it open. "_Feni!"_ They pulled harder, and slowly, the ancient seams began to loosen. "_FENI!" _

An intense burst of liquid suddenly sprayed out of the seam, soaking the three unfortunate diggers who were near the compartment. Their screams echoed loudly, followed by the cries of the unharmed diggers as they watched their three comrades emerge from the shower with their skin and muscles grotesquely melted off.

"Let me get this straight," Kanda started as he and Allen sat cross-legged on the dusty, stone floor while Lavi was standing a couple of feet away, trying to play golf with a crowbar and a couple of rocks. They had given up on their dig-upwards-and-steal-the-book plan because the ceiling didn't look like it had any intention of letting them through. "They would take out your _guts_ and shove them into little catastrophic _jars_?"

"_Canopic_ jars," Allen corrected pointedly. "And they'd take out your heart as well," he added, grinning at the poorly concealed horrified expression on the Asian man's face. It was really amusing to see someone like Kanda – who'd supposedly seen a lot of terrible things in his life – conspicuously grimace at the mere notion of having one's innards detached the moment their souls left earth. "Ooh, and you know how they'd take out your brains?"

This time it was Lavi who cringed and turned to look at his best friend. "Uh, Allen, I don't think we need to know that—"

"They'd use a red hot iron poker, shove it up your nose until it reached your brain, scramble whatever's in there until it melted and attached to the hook, and they pulled it straight out of your nostrils," Allen continued, ignoring Lavi's earlier comment as the British man described the Egyptian's gruesome burial rituals with a sick sort of awe and relish.

"Well, _that's _gotta hurt," Kanda commented, his hand flying protectively towards his own nose, as if there was any chance an iron poker would appear out of nowhere and shove itself up his nostrils.

Allen rolled his eyes. "It's called mummification. You'd be _dead_ when they do this."

"For the record," the Asian man turned towards the redhead who started playing golf again. "If I don't make it out of here, don't put me down for mummification."

"Likewise," Lavi replied, before swinging his crowbar. The rock he hit flew across the room and probably collided with something on the ceiling that was responsible for making a chunk of the roof come crashing down. Regardless of whether it was consciously or unconsciously done, Kanda suddenly grabbed Allen's hand and pulled him away before either of them was buried under the descending rocks. Lavi stood at one side, staring nervously at the rubble, the way a child would when caught in the act of doing something naughty. "Uh…is this the part where I say 'Oops'?"

"No, this is the part where you start praying to all your fucking Egyptian gods because I am really tempted to try mummifying a person when he's still _alive,_" Kanda growled, hastily moving away from Allen when he realized that in his unconscious (?) efforts of trying to protect the idiot beansprout, he had wrapped his arms protectively around the other man's body. And to make things worse, both of them ended up in a _very _compromising position. At least the sprout didn't see anything. His eyes were shut tight in fear, and Kanda wondered if the man always did this whenever he was faced with fatality. _Doesn't want to see death, huh?_

"What the hell did you do?" he snarled, jumping towards Lavi and pretending to be preoccupied with the intention of beating the living hell out of the redhead, when in truth, Kanda was just trying his best not to let his blush show. _Shit, I should have let him get crushed, _he grumbled inwardly, struggling hard not to remember the accidental closeness between their faces, and the feeling of Allen's warm, surprisingly pleasant breath brushing against his lips. _Oh holy motherfucking—_

"Oh. My. God."

There was something in Allen's voice that made the two older men momentarily forget their own dilemmas and snap their heads towards his direction, both of them wondering what had induced the younger man into such an overwhelmed state. A curious and vaguely concerned frown appeared on the Asian man's face as he noticed the unhealthy pallor that was starting to dominate the British man's features. "Beansprout?" he asked warily. He momentarily forgot about their recent embarrassing encounter, and approached the white-haired man. "Oi, what's gotten into you?"

Allen didn't reply. Instead, he started touching the surface of whatever it was that fell on them, staring at it with a burning form of admiration and wonder. "It's a sarcophagus," he stated in a hushed voice, as if speaking any louder would destroy the importance of the moment. "Buried at the base of Anubis," he added thoughtfully, as his fingers started brushing off the dirt on the sarcophagus' surface. "He must've been someone of great importance…"

The white-haired man suddenly froze, and for one striking second Kanda felt the room's temperature rapidly drop. Allen looked back at the two other men in the room with a chilling glint in his silver-grey eyes as he gave his companions a slow, eerie smile. "Or someone very, _very _naughty."

In some other dark, clammy place within the dreary suburbs of Hamunaptra, the smelly old warden was taking his sweet time plucking out each and every embedded scarab his beady little eyes could find. He had taken nearly a dozen of them already, and didn't show any signs of stopping or even slowing down. Why should he stop? There was money right in front of him, and even if he had been a first-rate perverted pig, the warden was the living proof that not all pigs were stupid. At the very least, they weren't dense enough to turn away from gold when it was shining right in front of their greedy eyes.

The warden had it all planned out. First, he would act all supportive and try to gain as much trust as he could. Then, when he had fooled them into believing that he was their ally, he would steal all the gold from right under their noses. He never planned to stick to the twenty-five percent deal anyway. No, the warden wanted _more._

Nevertheless, it was only one careless gesticulation that brought a rather nasty end to his "great" plan, an end that most people would argue over whether or not it was something he deserved.

It was only an absent slip of his fat fingers, but it was enough to mark the prologue of his bizarre demise. As the scarab-like jewel fell on the dusty stone floor, a visible crack appeared on the jewel's surface. At first glance, it appeared as if the collision was responsible for the damage, but as the crack continued to grow, and as something akin to an insect's appendages pierced through the surface, it was pretty safe to say that there was something _inside _the jewel, and that _something_ was trying to get out.

_Crack. _

The surface broke apart and revealed an excited pitch-black scarab that first started wandering around for a couple of seconds, trying to get used to its new surroundings. But only seconds after, the odd creature started showing signs that it had sensed the warden's foul presence. Instead off running away, like most creatures did when faced with a big, fat, and excessively appalling being like the warden, the scarab scurried towards the Arabian man and suddenly tried to bite its way into the man's shoe.

One might wonder how an ordinary scarab could possibly win against the tough leather of a boot, but then again, who said anything about being "ordinary"?

The following screams were unnecessary, as the man-eating scarab beetle dug its way into his body, moving beneath his skin and ultimately vanishing somewhere inside his head.

"Well…? Who's the Big Cheese?" Lavi asked, strumming his fingers on the lid impatiently. Allen ignored him, already very much engrossed in translating the hieratics and hieroglyphics carved on the cover.

"'He who shalt not be named'," the younger man stated aloud, a perplexed expression quickly taking over his face. "That's odd."

"Look at this," Kanda interrupted, blowing the dust off a very complex looking figure on the lid. "It looks like some sort of lock," he observed and gave the sarcophagus a couple of sharp raps. "What's this thing made of? Granite with a steel interior?"

"Quarried granite with cobalt lining," Allen stated plainly, as if he was discussing the weather, while he studied the lock with a fascinated expression. Kanda's eyes widened faintly in surprise; he was caught off guard at how the younger man had effortlessly pointed out such specific details. _So he really was more than just talk, _he thought, looking at the Brit with a new form of respect.

"Tsk, whoever's in here sure wasn't getting out," Lavi commented as he knocked on the surface and pretended to listen for a response.

"No kidding," Kanda grunted as he gave the sarcophagus a few experimental hits with his mattock. The surface itself was barely scratched. "It'll take us a month to crack this thing without a key."

The missing piece inside Allen's mind finally clicked into place. "A key? A key! A key! Now that's what he was talking about!" he exclaimed wildly, startling the other two men in the room. He almost jumped towards Lavi's backpack – which was lying open on the floor – and rummaged for the item he was looking for.

"Who was talking about what?" Kanda questioned, throwing an inquiring glance at Lavi, who just shrugged in return.

"The bald man on the barge, the one with the hook! He was looking for a key," Allen responded hastily, almost tripping on the hem of his dress as he scurried back to the sarcophagus excitedly, holding the black puzzle box from before.

"Hey, that's mine!" Lavi whined, trying to make a grab for it, only to have his hand slapped away in return. Allen opened the puzzle box and mounted it onto the lock gently.

A perfect fit.

Before any of them could dwell on their newfound discovery, however, loud, raucous screams echoed into the chamber, coming from a nearby corridor. "Oh shit," Kanda cursed, taking out his guns as he sprinted towards the source of the ruckus, closely followed by Allen and then by Lavi, who was the only one who remembered to get the key before they left. "What the fuck—"

The Asian man spotted the fat warden who was screaming madly as he ran around in circles, his big fat hands clutching his bald head tightly. "Whoa, whoa, where's the fire, old *goof? Are you finally *off your nuts?" Lavi inquired as he and Kanda tried to grab the frenzied Arabian and make him calm down. The warden, oblivious to their efforts, shoved both men aside roughly and darted towards opposite direction. Allen's pupils constricted, for he could almost predict the next chain of events, and he dashed after the man, desperately trying to stop him from running.

"Stop!" he shouted. "Stop running or you'll—"

Allen didn't get to finish his sentence since the distinct sound of someone's skull being crushed against the stone wall was enough to reduce all his words into nothingness.

"You think the curse killed him, don't you?" Allen pointed a finger accusingly at his redheaded friend while both of them huddled together by the fire. It had shocked the British man to find out that it was already dark and the sun had departed a couple of hours ago. It was hard to tell what time it was, especially when they were couple of feet underground. Lavi shrugged, appearing unconcerned by the warden's death.

"It was probably something that he ate," he muttered, entertaining himself with their late "friend's" belongings. Allen rolled his eyes. It was typical of Lavi to be more interested in the deceased's possessions than the deceased himself.

"Those American bastards had their own share of misfortunes too," came a gruff voice, and Allen didn't need to turn to see who it belonged to. Kanda crouched down by the fire, keeping a couple of feet's distance between him and the white-haired man. "Three of their diggers were…_melted._" He said the last word with mixed revulsion and doubt, as if he himself couldn't believe what he was saying.

"What?" Allen gasped, horror and disbelief flickering noticeably across his youthful face, which pushed Kanda to raise an eyebrow at such a reaction. It was pretty ironic how Allen, who appeared so calm and composed whenever he talked about the gruesome aspects of Egyptian culture, could be just as horror-struck as the average bloke whenever blood and gore entered the picture.

"How?" Lavi asked, his green eye sparkling with interest.

"Salt acid," Kanda replied as he threw another twig at the fire. "_Pressurized_ salt acid. Some kind of…ancient booby trap," he added, his voice quieting down. The trio stared at the flames for a couple of seconds, in silent reverence for the souls that departed that day, before Lavi decidedly broke the heavy silence.

"Maybe this place really is cursed," he muttered darkly, throwing in a piece of scrap towards the fire. And as if on cue, a cold, bone-chilling wind suddenly blew by, making the flames flicker in an eerie manner.

Another silence.

"Oh, for goodness' sake, you two," Allen snapped, forcefully breaking the awkward silence that had descended upon them once again. The Asian man turned to look at him with a curious expression.

"You don't believe in curses, huh?"

"No, I don't," the British man stated without hesitation, as he straightened up and stuck out his chin pugnaciously. "I believe that if I can _see_ it, and if I can _touch_ it, then it's _real_. That's what I believe."

"I believe in being prepared," Kanda deadpanned, cocking the massive elephant gun he pulled out from his duffel bag loudly. Lavi snickered as Allen paled, and decided to sift through the late warden's pouch in order to occupy his mind with something else.

"Well, Let's see what our dead friend believed in, shall we?" The redhead buried his hand into the bag, feeling around for anything papery that might be cash, or maybe smooth and precious like gold perhaps. He continued groping around, completely oblivious of the fact that the warden had stored all of those man-eating scarabs inside…

"AAAHH!" Lavi screamed, making both Kanda and Allen jump in surprise.

"What? What is it?" Allen panicked, automatically moving away the moment he saw Lavi's bloody hand. He didn't get too far though, because his back suddenly collided with something hard and flat.

"Watch it, beansprout," Kanda growled, roughly pushing Allen away from him.

"I found a bottle of wine!" Lavi chirped happily, ignoring his friend's ongoing predicament. "The lid was broken and I cut myself with the glass, but…oh well, none of that matters now," he grinned, before taking a swig of the wine.

Allen groaned and rubbed the spot on his shoulder that the dark-haired man had pushed. "You don't need to be that bloody violent about it, you know," he grumbled, throwing Kanda an infuriated look. The Asian man merely rolled his dark eyes.

"Don't you get it yet? I don't give a damn."

"Insensitive jerk," Allen hissed, as he sat as far away from Kanda as possible.

"Talk to yourself," the older man scoffed. "It's not as if you actually pause and consider _my_ feelings whenever you crack those insults about my intelligence, insisting that you're smarter than me. Which isn't true, of course."

"But I wasn't insulting you. Everything I said was purely _factual,_" Allen replied flatly, crossing his arms over his chest in an unrepentant manner. "The truth hurts, Kanda. But it will set you free."

"Shut the hell up," the other man snarled. "If that's what you think, then face _my_ truth too, beansprout. _I don't care _about your feelings, either. In fact, I can kick you around all day and not feel the slightest sliver of guilt at all." And as if to further emphasize his point, Kanda grabbed a small pebble and threw it swiftly towards Allen's direction, aiming for his forehead. Fortunately, since the British man was somehow trained to react quickly (developing fast reflexes and self-defense skills were necessary for Allen's continued revival, especially when he had a living plague named Cross for an uncle, who had a knack of attracting debt collectors the way shit attracted flies), he was able to catch the pebble before it hit him.

"Nice try but not good enough." Allen threw back the pebble with malice, hoping that it would enter Kanda's mouth and choke him to death.

"Huh," Kanda snorted as he caught the pebble too and chucked it back at Allen, who then caught it and threw it back, and soon a childish game of Who-hits-the-other-first started unceremoniously, with an additional feature called Insult-each-other-first-before-throwing.

"Why you little—"

"You are one bloody prick—"

"I'll fucking kill you sooner or later—"

"I'll steal your gun and blow a hole through your empty head—"

"Damn you idiot beansprout—"

"Annoying, insensitive twat—"

"What the hell does 'twat' mean—"

"Even if I explain, you're puny mind wouldn't understand—"

On one occasion however, Allen decided to change tact and merely dodged instead of catching it, forgetting entirely about the presence of his best friend behind him.

"Ouch!" Lavi yelped, as a pebble painfully collided his right temple. "Jesus Christ, what the fuck?" he exclaimed, angrily, turning to glare at the two other men who looked back at him with impenitent expressions. "What on earth are you two dickheads doing? This is seriously not *berries, man, and is as far from *the bee's knees as you can _get_," he rambled as he massaged his sore temple. "Shit, who started this stupid fight?"

Lavi held up a hand just as Allen was about to open his mouth to answer. "An' I'd better not be gettin' *horsefeathers, *Bluenose, 'cuz I'm goin' to be seriously pissed at you," he added as he pointed at Allen rudely, his speech a little slurred as the wine began to affect his system.

Allen looked wounded by the insult. "_Bluenose?_ Why, I _never_—"

"Shh!"

The two men snapped their heads towards Kanda's direction, anxious looks on their faces. They had encountered that kind of "shh" once before, when they had heard those disturbing scratching noises in the labyrinth.

"What is it?" Allen asked cautiously, completely forgetting about their previous argument.

Kanda didn't reply. Instead he bent down and pressed his ear against the ground.

He knew this sound. He knew it all _too _well.

"Holy shitting fucktards_,_" he cursed, jumping up as he threw his elephant gun towards Allen, who caught it with alarm. "Take that and stay here!" he ordered, before grabbing his sword from his duffel bag and running towards the direction of the American's camp, where the sound of hooves and pistols firing were coming from. "Oof!" he gasped as he collided with someone who was running in the opposite direction. "What the fuck…_Daisya?_" Kanda narrowed his eyes as he quickly grabbed the man's collar before the man could make a run for it. "Where do you think you're going?"

"Ack!" The clown-like yelped as Kanda's grip tightened. "I-I was just looking for you! I want to fight together with my friend!" he explained, throwing the Asian man a nervous smile, praying that Kanda would see him as a waste of his time and just let him go.

Instead of rebuking him, however, Kanda smirked and started dragging Daisya back to the American's camp. "Then let's go and fight _together_, my _friend,_" he sneered.

The other man groaned in horror and struggled vainly against his firm grip. "Damn it, Kanda! Why do you like fighting so much?"

"'Cause I look good doing it," Kanda replied simply, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. "Now go out there and die," he muttered before kicking a shrieking Daisya in front of a galloping horse.

"What the bloody hell is he thinking? I'm not staying here like a pathetic damsel in distress! Wait for me, you insufferable prick!" Allen called out as he grabbed the elephant gun and ran after Kanda's departing figure.

"Allen!" Lavi scrambled back up as he went after his friend. "Exactly what part of 'stay here' didn't you understand?" he shouted, but his voice was soon drowned out by the sound of people screaming and guns firing. "Ack!" he yelped, almost getting shot by one of the black-robed men, and dove down behind a fallen pillar for protection. "Bloody hell," he muttered, taking out the gun he stole from his Asian friend and beginning to shoot the villains off their horses, pausing every now and then to drink from the bottle he carried with him.

Kanda was doing something akin to what Lavi was, only with much, much more style and expertise, and one hundred percent alcohol free. Instead of using his pistols, however, the Japanese man decided to stay true to his ethnicity by utilizing a genuine katana instead. He entered the battlefield with amazing alacrity, striking down every opponent smoothly without a single hint of uncertainty in his actions. Kanda's fighting instincts were working great as well, giving him the ability to be completely aware of most of his surroundings while he was cutting down all his enemies.

But there was someone he failed to notice. Particularly, a familiar white-haired man who was watching him with wide, incredulous silver eyes.

Allen couldn't describe the amazement he felt as he watched Kanda fight and move around with his sword. There was a certain grace in his movements, a form of unique elegance that could only be found in the heat of battle. It was like a dance, a deadly but undeniably beautiful dance that both threatened and lured the spectator in at the same time, causing him to be completely mesmerized by the harmony between body and blade_._

"_Allen, look out!" _

It was Lavi's drunk but distressed voice that successfully slapped him out his momentary reverie, making the British man realize with growing regret, that he had allowed himself to space out in the middle of a battlefield. What on earth was he thinking? How could he allow himself to be taken in by such trivial, ridiculous things? _Stupid, stupid, bloody stupid! _Allen hissed inwardly, as he forced himself to turn away from Kanda's fighting figure.

"Oh _shit_," he cussed for the first time, seeing a horse galloping towards him directly with a rider who brandished a rather nasty looking sword and an entirely murderous expression. Allen raised the elephant gun and aimed it towards the approaching enemy, but for some reason, his finger just wouldn't pull the trigger. The man could feel his knees shaking in fear as he stared, wide-eyed at the adversary, feeling entirely powerless. _I can't do it, _he thought. _No…I can't. I can't kill. _

"Allen! Stop hesitating!" Lavi shouted, sensing his friend's distress. "Just imagine that that galloping bastard is your uncle! That's Cross Marian, you hear me? THAT'S CROSS MARIAN, YOUR HORRIBLE UNCLE, AND IF YOU DON'T KILL HIM NOW, ALL THE DEBTS YOU'RE FORCED TO PAY OFF WILL INCREASE A HUNDRED FOLD!"

The sound of an elephant gun being fired echoed all throughout Hamunaptra.

"Nice shot, babe!" Lavi yelled rowdily, laughing as Allen's target fell dead on the sand. The alcohol was making feel both tipsy and giddy, but his aim was still good enough to kill three out of every five of the black-robed men who got too close to his pillar a.k.a. hiding place. "I say, bloody good show!" He grinned tipsily as he shot down another two.

The sound of horses galloping from an unfamiliar direction suddenly caught his attention, and Lavi swiftly turned around to see another masked horseman advancing aggressively towards him. "Eep!" he shouted as he high-tailed out of his hiding place. "Yuu!" he screamed, going straight for his "friend." He spotted the longhaired man and waved frantically, only to find himself being deliberately ignored by his "friend". The sound of the hooves were getting closer now, and Lavi, in his many years of developing self-preservation techniques, knew that there was only one thing that could probably convince his Asian comrade to save his life.

"_Yuu, save me and I'll stop calling you by your first name!"_

"Fair enough," Kanda smirked, climbing up a nearby platform. He waited until the horseman was within reach, and abruptly jumped off the stone podium, grabbing the black-robed and knocking them both off the horse. "You're dead," he muttered as he used one arm to pin the man's chest down while his other arm raised the sword above his head.

But something felt wrong.

Really, _really _wrong.

Kanda's hand twitched, and he almost froze when he realized that there was something _soft_ and entirely unmanly on the other man's chest. And as he looked down, a hundred curses flashed across his mind all at once. "Holy shit!" he cried out, jumping away as the horrifying truth dawned upon him. The man was a _woman. _"Why the hell do you have _boobs_?"

"How rude," the woman scowled, and tried to take out her pistol, but Kanda had already seen through this and he slapped the gun away effortlessly with the flat end of his sword. The woman hissed, but didn't back away, her dark oriental eyes still challenging despite her weaponless situation.

"AHHHH! LENALEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

A shrill voice resounded all over the camp, catching the attention of majority of the people fighting inside. "What on earth—" Kanda's tirade was cut off by the sound of dozens of bullets, which made him dive for cover instinctively. And it was a good thing he did too; now, the space he had been occupying was marred with dozens of bullet holes. "Fuck," he hissed as his eyes fell upon another black-robed man with eyeglasses and a huge-ass Thompson machine gun strapped onto his horse.

"How dare you try to hurt my precious little sister!" the man hollered, pointing the weapon at Kanda and Kanda only. The Japanese man knew that he needed to act, and act fast, or else he would be seeing old man Hades sooner than he wanted. He dived abruptly towards an open fire and pulled out a dynamite stick from his pocket, lighting the fuse with the unrestricted flames. "Try shooting me," Kanda growled, holding up the dynamite with one hand as he held his sword with the other. "And all of us are gonna go 'boom'."

The bespectacled man's beady eyes narrowed at the ignited fuse, which was slowly but surely burning its way towards the dynamite stick. His eyes shifted from Kanda to Lenalee, and back to Kanda again, where he and the samurai soldier locked eyes. "Enough!" he announced, saying something in Egyptian that stopped the rest of the black-robed men from attacking. "We will shed no more blood," he continued, his voice cold and impersonal. "But you must leave. Leave this place or die." He pulled his sister up onto his own horse and allowed her to settle properly before continuing. "You have one day!" he stated before announcing something in Egyptian again, making their entire troupe retreat without further ado.

Kanda watched as the robed men fell back and disappeared from Hamunaptra, before turning around and spotting a mass of white hair lying rigid just a few paces away from him. For a moment, a sudden, unexpected feeling of dread crossed his mind, and he feared that the sprout might be dead. But as he moved closer and saw the youth's chest rising and falling steadily, Kanda relaxed and banished that unwanted fear to the farthest corner of his mind.

"Oi," he called out, nudging Allen's shoulder with his foot. "You still alive, sprout? Or can I try all that mummification stuff on you now?"

"Shut up," Allen groaned, opening his eyes slowly. "Can you act kind just this once and help me stand up? Please?" he grumbled, stretching out his hands, the way a child would when he wanted to be carried by his father.

Kanda rolled his eyes and grabbed the man's hand, jerking him up to his feet harshly.

Allen hissed as he nursed his now-injured arm. "Damn it, Kanda. Couldn't you be a little more compassionate?"

"If that's all the thanks I get for being kind, then I'd rather be an asshole," Kanda grunted, crossing his arms over his chest as he scowled and looked away. The white-haired man glared at him and was just about to crack a good retort when he realized that he was slowly falling forward.

"Whoa!" Kanda gasped in surprise as he caught the man in his arms. "What's got into you?"

"Sorry," Allen mumbled, sighing as he laid his head against Kanda's hard chest unconsciously. "Can you let me…lean against you for a while? My legs…they're too tired…and…and scared," he added softly, the last part barely audible. "Sorry," he muttered again, and this time, Kanda could see the man's shoulders visibly shivering. "This is…this is the first time I've ever experienced anything like this…you know…" His voice was hoarse, Kanda noted. It was as if Allen was struggling to hold back the tears that were threatening to leak out of his eyes.

_What a baby, _the Japanese man thought idly, although he didn't push Allen away. There was something oddly pleasant and comforting about their current position right now, something he had never felt before. He couldn't find a word to describe it properly; the closest he could get to was that, with Allen leaning against him like that and both of their bodies so close, it was really…surprisingly…_warm. _

**A/N: Sorry folks. ;w; The drunk Allen scene will be shown next chapter. ;DD **

**Anyway, I have no comment about this chapter. OwO Whatever you're comments are, that'll be my comments too, so if you like it, I like it too, and if you hate it, I hate it too. XDD**

***Feni - ****I'm not sure but this is supposed to be pronounced as fee-ey-nah. I **_**think **_**it means "put your backs into it!" or something like that [shrugs]**

**Anyway, I've used a lot of 20s slang in here so I'll post the meanings too, in order to avoid confusion.**

***baloney - nonsense**

***bump off - to murder**

***hardboiled - a tough guy**

***Dumb Dora - stupid girl**

***goof - dumb person**

***off your nuts - crazy**

***berries - pleasing**

***the bee's knees - wonderful, sweet, or extraordinary**

***horsefeathers - lies**

***Bluenose - an extremely prudish person with a horrid sense of style**

**There. 8DDD**

**PLEASE REVIEW! I ALWAYS LOVE YOUR REVIEWS, AND I'M HAPPY WHENEVER SOMEONE REVIEWS! Sorry for those who are still waiting for an update on Handicapped Love btw. ;w; Whenever I find a muse, it always ends up as a muse for D. Mummy-Man, and so I cannot write the next chapter of HL. TT_TT But if it would make you feel any better, one-fourth (about 1500 words, I think) of Chapter 10 of Handicapped Love is already done, so don't start thinking that I'm going to ditch that story! I would never! **


	7. immoral immortality

**A/N: This is the unedited version, because my beta is currently on mental vacation, and she wouldn't be back until she gets a good grasp of her sanity once again. So expect LOTS of spelling and grammatical errors, because I assure you that I wasn't born to be a competent English speaker or writer.**

**Please feel free to point out all the mistakes you've spotted in your reviews. 8DD Thanks! And I AM SO SORRY TO KEEP YOU ALL WAITING.**

Chapter VII: Immoral Immortality

Kanda had experienced a hell lot of things in his twenty-three years of existing and fighting battles that didn't make any sense at all. He had shot down a dozen armed opponents with just one half-loaded pistol. He had seen the strangest things that could happen if you leave a mare in the heat beside an especially aroused camel. He had heard his comrades' last words as they died beside him in the battlefield. He had felt an ancient and evil presence before, right there, in the very bowels of Hamunaptra. He, Kanda Yu, had managed to survive the rabid fangs of the Sahara, all alone and without a single drop of water or a piece of bread to aid him. With all these experiences stocked up in his mind and hammered into his body, one could say that the number of things that could surprise him were very miniscule or even equal to none.

However, as Kanda sat there by the fire, staying very still as he watched a very drunk white-haired British man inch closer and closer towards his face, he was very, _very_ _surprised_.

_A few minutes ago…_

"Shit, you suck at war beansprout," Kanda taunted in a slurry voice as he took another swig of the bottle of wine Lavi found in the dead warden's pouch. "I could hear ya' screaming from where I stood. God, your girly shrieks are louder than the gunshots, what an idiot."

"Shut up…you twat," Allen slurred, his face red from the amount of alcohol he was taking in. He roughly snatched the bottle away from the Asian man and chugged down its contents like there was no tomorrow. Normally, Allen would avoid any form of alcohol as much as possible; because the mere thought of it brought certain unpleasant memories that were labeled with CROSS in bold letters. However, every now and then, under the bad influence of a certain one-eyed redhead, Allen would give in to the seductive beverage and allow himself to let loose, even just for a while.

Unfortunately, though, his tolerance for alcohol is far lower than the average, making him as drunk as a man who polished a whole barrel of wine even when he had only taken a couple of swigs. "_You _are the idiot, idiot. You're like a Dumb Dora with a penish, you twit," he sneered, taking another swig. "Deshent men like me aren't shupposhed to be ash barbaric ash you," he babbled, muttering a couple more words but they were too incoherent for Kanda to understand. "Shorry but I don't like killing people for a living."

"Sooner or later you'll have to, beansprout. That's the kind of world we're in and you ain't changing it," Kanda countered, pulling the nearly empty bottle away from Allen's possessive hands. "And decent men don't go chasing after ancient books inside ancient, big-ass city coffins like Hamunaptra either." The younger man let out an indignant growl before clumsily trying to pry it away from the older man's firm grasp. "Gimme! Gimme!" Allen whined, still trying to get the alcoholic beverage back.

"Tsk. Don't you know when to stop, beansprout? You've nearly polished off the entire bottle and you still want more, even if you're as tipsy as the Oracle of Delphi, sheesh," Kanda snorted, slapping Allen's hands away the way a mother would when chastising her naughty child. "No more wine for you, you loser. Do all Brits have such a low alcohol tolerance? If yes, then fuck, your race is seriously messed up."

"Kanda you meanie," Allen grumbled, folding his arms as he pouted, thus unwittingly catching the Asian man off-guard with the unexpected (and highly uncharacteristic) adorableness. "Don't you go shtereotyping me with thoshe other English men. I'm different, and that'sh pretty obvioush with my physhical appearanshe and all," the younger man babbled once again, although this time his garbled words held a pained tone. "You don't know me sho shut the fuck up and lemme shleep."

"Hell yeah, I don't know shit about you," Kanda retorted, purposely ignoring Allen's last words. "And heck, I don't really understand you. You're even harder to read than that snoring Cyclops over there," he added, rudely gesturing at Lavi's sleeping form with his middle finger.

Instead of feeling insulted however, Allen surprised Kanda by breaking out into hearty, drunken laughter. "Oh yesh, _that _I know very much," the younger man mused, though the underlying bitter tone in his voice didn't escape the Asian man's notice. Kanda frowned, slightly perplexed by the bitterness he heard. What was wrong with this guy?

Allen didn't seem to notice the change in Kanda's expression. He was too drunk and loose to care about anything else. His tongue felt really free today, and his mind was so clear, it made his body feel so light. It was as if a big burden was lifted off his shoulders, as if nothing in the world could possibly constrict him. _No wonder Cross loved drinking so much, _he thought idly. _That bastard liked to feel wonderful all the time. Huh._

"But maybe you're wondering…no, I _know _you're wondering," Allen continued, gesticulating wildly as the alcohol started to dominate his motor skills. "You're wondering what…what is a place like me doing... in a boy like this?"

Kanda itched to say _no. _He really wanted to point out the obvious errors in the younger man's statement, but then decided against it, knowing that it would ruin the current mood. And besides, if he broke Allen's idiotic monologue now, who knows when he'll get another chance to see him act so inappropriately? This was definitely the perfect blackmail material and there was no way he'd let this chance slip from his hands. "Yeah, something like that."

Allen grinned widely, happy to find out that Kanda was somewhat willing to listen to what he was about to say. "Well, you know," Allen started; forgetting his inhibitions as he suddenly leaned towards Kanda, who instinctively recoiled in shock. Just as the older man was about to move back in order to honor his personal space, Allen grabbed his collar and inhibited him from moving any further. "You shee," the younger man continued, using his free hand to reveal the locket that was concealed beneath his collar. "Egypt ish in my blood. I don't know my real parentsh but I wash found and adopted by foshter father here, in the very landsh of Egypt," Allen stated, his eyes sparkling with so much pride and joy that Kanda couldn't bring himself to interrupt him and state otherwise. "My foshter father, Mana, wash a really famoush explorer. He loved Egypt sho much, that after I finished my shtudiesh in London, he and I shettled in Cairo."

Kanda wanted to congratulate himself for understanding all that Allen was saying, even if the man was talking like an undead mummy. But he'll have to put that off for later.

"Okay, I get your adventurous foster daddy. And I get the "you being found in Egypt" part. I get your one-eyed money-driven buddy too. But _you,_" he paused, throwing the drunken Brit a curious look. "You I don't get. What are _you _doing here?"

At those words, a swift shift of mood came upon Allen's demeanor, and as Kanda noted the drunken rage in the Brit's eyes, he realized that he said something wrong. "Whoa, whoa, calm down—"

"_What am I doing here?"_ Allen half-shouted as he grabbed Kanda's collar with both hands and pulled his head down in order to look straight at the man's steel blue Oriental eyes. "Look, I may not be an explorer! Or…or an adventurer! Or a treasure hunter! Or a gunfighter, Mister _Kanda_," he snapped angrily, saying Kanda's name with much contempt. The Asian man didn't fight back; he was too stunned by Allen's reaction to do anything else. From afar it looked like a normal, drunken tantrum, but as the older man looked into Allen's silver irises, watching and noting the immense hurt that reflected on them so clearly, Kanda couldn't make himself do or say anything. The pain he saw in Allen's eyes, the pain he could hear in the man's voice, and the pain he felt as the younger man's grasp was almost choking him… all those rendered him incapable of reacting to the Brit's sudden outburst. _Why did he seem like he was suffering so much?_

"But…But I…I am proud of what I am," Allen suddenly stated, in a more calm manner than before. His hold loosened, and Kanda used that chance to break free while trying his best to preserve the Brit's now-tamed mood. Who would have known that the British could be so moody when drunk? "And that is?" he asked in a low voice, as if afraid that speaking any louder would instigate another one of those pained outbursts again.

"I," Allen started, a dreamy, almost trance-like look upon his face. Kanda's mouth twitched into a small, barely-there smile. The transition from enraged to idiotically wistful was too hilarious to overlook. You just can't _unsee _it. There was a thoughtful pause before the British man continued, giving Kanda the impression that Allen would give out an extremely profound conclusion. The Asian man waited for it, setting his mind into its reflective mode as he prepared to comprehend whatever philosophical insights would come out of the younger man's mouth.

"I am a _librarian._"

…

What. The. Fuck.

Kanda stared in disbelief at Allen's dreamy face, and regarded that goofy grin on his face with an incredulous glare. _This idiot is wasted. Seriously wasted, _he thought, letting out a disgruntled sigh as he face palmed. "You are definitely an idio—"

Time and space seemed to freeze as Kanda stared, red-faced, at the pouting mouth of a certain British man, which was uncomfortably close to his own. _Too close, _the Asian man thought weakly, not daring to breathe as his muscles tensed and remained unnervingly immobile. "I…am going to kiss you, Kanda," Allen whispered breathily and the older man felt a sudden shiver run down his spine as the younger man's warm breath brushed against his quivering lips. Kanda's own breathing hitched as Allen inched closer and closer, taking a painstakingly slow time to close the gap between their faces.

_Is this a dream?_ Kanda couldn't help but ask himself, whilst staring at those puckered, rosy lips that little by little approached him. _Am I fucking disillusioned already? God, whoever you are, please tell me that this is not some damn mirage._

The heat was rising up his cheeks, and under the timid light of the bonfire, one could see the slight tint of pink on the Japanese man's pale cheeks. It was so easy for him to push Allen away and stop whatever was going to happen next from happening. But something…something was stopping him from rejecting this sudden ordeal. Although that sane, masculine part of his mind glowered and hissed in protest, a stronger, more dominant part urged him to just give in, to stop thinking for once and just let his instincts reign over him.

Allen was less then a centimeter away from his mouth, and suddenly, a wet, slippery tongue licked his lower lip.

Kanda lost it.

_This better be a fucking dream, else heaven and hell be damned, _his mind growled, losing all control, and grabbing that youthful face towards his.

Allen let out a small moan as Kanda slipped his tongue into his eager mouth, searching and exploring every existing part with wild and ruthless vigor. His hands grabbed on to Kanda's shirt, his grip tightening as the intensity of their kiss increased. The older man kept a firm hold on the other man's head, intertwining his fingers with those silky white locks that glowed so beautifully under the light of the desert moon. He could taste the wine's flavor inside Allen's mouth, and the intoxicating, alcoholic aroma mingling with his breath urged Kanda to prod into the other's mouth with as much desperation and enthusiasm as a starved man thrown into a feast.

What a wonderful dream it was.

And damn, he didn't want it to end yet.

However, those Egyptian gods really knew how to piss him off.

The dream stopped, and the magic disappeared as soon as Kanda felt the tongue he was passionately wrestling with wither into a passive state. The Asian man's eyes widened in shock as he felt Allen leave his mouth and fall forward, landing fast asleep on Kanda's lap.

A full minute, filled with silent snores, passed by before Kanda fully realized that: One, Allen was no longer kissing him. Two, the idiot was snoring on his lap. And three, that he wanted _more _than just a kiss from the white-haired man.

Holy shit.

_I'm going to kill myself. I'm going to kill myself. I'm going to kill myself. I'm going to kill myself. I'm going to kill myself. I'm going to kill myself. I'm going to kill myself. I'm going to kill myself. I'm going to kill myself. I'm going to kill myself. I'm going to kill myself. I'm going to kill myself. I'm going to kill myself. _The mantra went on and on in Kanda's head as his hand twitched and itched to reach for the loaded pistol inside his duffel bag. _Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, goddamit, shit, what the fuck is going on with me?_

This was too much. His mind and heart and body couldn't take anymore of this insanity. His scent, his red cheeks, his adorable smile, and his luscious lips… Allen's face kept flashing across his mind over and over again, like an impertinent record that failed to move on. And god, that kiss… Kanda had kissed women before, but… but not as passionate as _that._ Just remembering it was making his body feel really hot, and the older man didn't have to look down to see that there was a growing bulge that was pushing against his pants.

He looked down at the sleeping man on his lap and couldn't help but gently brush off some white strands that covered his face. _Looking so damn innocent even after what you've done,_ Kanda scowled, although only half-heartedly, as he watched Allen in his sleep. _You're quite the devil, aren't you?_

"Hurry up ya' suckers or I'll blow 'yer brains out!" David cackled as he pointed his pistols at the shaken Egyptian diggers who were pulling an ancient looking chest out of the secret compartment under the statue of Anubis. They obviously didn't understand what David was saying, but the guns pointed at them was enough to motivate them to move faster. "I'll blow yer brains out too…if ya have any brains, that is!" Jasdero added, joining his brother in their degrading laughter. Road just rolled her eyes as she rode on Skin's muscular shoulder, while both the blonde woman, Lulu Bell, and Sheryll stared silently at the chest that was being carried out.

"Sheryll," Lulu muttered, and although her face remained stoic, the caution and unease was in her tone. "I have a very bad feeling about that chest."

"Same here, Lulu," the man replied, although his expression showed how excited he was, rather than restless. "There's a very distinct, evil aura coming from the box. I wonder why that is~" He mused in a creepy, singsong voice that made the tall woman cringe. There was always something greatly disturbing about Sheryll's actions, and about the way that crazed gleam always appears in his eyes whenever he sees something he regards as "delicious." It freaked Lulu out, and she knew that she wasn't the only one.

The box was settled down on the ground, and diggers, probably sensitive to the ominous aura surrounding the chest, hastily moved away from it. Road snorted. "Chickens," she scoffed before turning to her dad. "Daddy, what's in the box?"

"We're about to find out, dear," Sheryll replied as he approached the chest. He took out a brush from his pocket and started dusting the dirt off the surface. "There are some hieroglyphics on this," he commented, although he knew that none besides Lulu was actually interested. "Oh~" he suddenly hummed, his eyes glinting with morbid fascination. Instinctively, all the others took one cautious step away from him. Sheryll was radiating with such perverted fascination, anyone would have thought he was a serial rapist or a madman – although he probably is – just by looking at him.

"W-What is it, Sheryll?" David asked cautiously, trying to act casually but all the while keeping a tight grip on his pistol as he prepared himself to shoot the moment the older man lost it. "What's it say?"

"There is a curse upon this chest," the dark-skinned Egyptologist replied, a rather manic smile on his face. "And a pretty nasty one too."

"Curse, my ass," Road, who was probably the only one immune to Sheryll's disturbing aura, retorted as she sucked on a lollipop. "Who cares about such a stupid thing? C'mon dad, where's the treasure? I wanna see some gold ASAP."

"Now, now, Road," the older man replied, shaking his head in exasperation. The perverted aura was gone. "How many times have I told you not to say bad words? Don't stoop down to David and Jasdero's level, please," he added, sighing. "Also," he continued, his face suddenly turning grave. "Don't underestimate the power of the Egyptians. In these hallowed grounds, what was unleashed in the ancient times is still as strong today as it was before."

The teenage girl only rolled her eyes. "Yeah, yeah," she muttered, taking out another piece of candy from her pocket. "Whatever. Just read out what it sa—"

"Death will come on swift wings to whomever opens this chest".

And as if on cue, a gust of bone-chilling wind blew into the chamber, making all the torches flicker ominously. The diggers screamed all at once, realizing the danger they were in, and all together ran out of the chamber, paying no heed to the six foreigners and one very frightened man who were left behind. "We should not be here," Daisya muttered.

Sheryll paid them no mind and continued to translate the hieroglyphics carved on the cover of the chest. "It says here that there is one, from the undead, who, if brought back to life, is bound by sacred law to consummate this curse."

"The hell I know what 'consummate' means but we better just make sure that we don't bring any one back from the dead, huh?" David commented, trying to be funny even if he was feeling very nervous all of a sudden. Jasdero gives out a forced and obviously fake laugh, in his attempt to go along with his twin in trying to ease the heavy atmosphere.

"He will _kill _all those who opened this chest… and assimilate their organs and fluids."

"What does 'assimilate' mean?" Jasdero asked his brother. David shrugged. "I dunno. Hopefully it means he'll leave them alone."

"Idiots," Road snapped, shooting the two a dirty look. "Assimilate means absorb. In dumber terms it means he'll tear out your guts and use them as his own."

The two brothers looked horrified, while Skin, overhearing their discussion, decided to ask a question of his own. "Are guts sweet?"

"Shut up, Skin," Lulu deadpanned, sensing that if she allowed the muscular man to talk any further, Sheryll would snap because of the overwhelming stupidity. "Guts are not sweet so you can't eat them. Road, give him some more candy so that he'll shut up."

"Don't order my around, blonde bitch," Road snarled, although she did as she was told anyway, and gave Skin her last bag of candy, which the muscular man happily consumed.

"Like I said, stop using such vulgar words, my dear," Sheryll groaned before continuing. "And in doing so he will regenerate, and no longer be the undead." Lulu noticed something flicker across the man's eyes, but it was gone before she could decipher what it was. However, her gut feeling told her that it wasn't something good. "But a plague upon mankind."

Another gust of wind blew by, but this time it carried a heavier, haunting ambiance that made the chamber suddenly very cold and dark. Even the flames of the torches seemed t be slowly succumbing into the shadows. "It's the curse…" Daisya suddenly muttered, drawing everyone's attention to him. "It's the curse…beware!" He suddenly screamed, running out of the chamber. "Beward of the curse!"

"Stupid superstitious bastard," Jasdero cackled.

"Sheryll," Lulu interjected, feeling very restless. "Are you sure this is a good ide—"

"Well, we didn't come all this way for nothing. Let's open it anyway," David snapped, picking a crowbar and latching it to a small wedge between the cover and the box itself. "Treasures in for us fellas!" He exclaimed, and jerked the crowbar with all his might.

A white vapor blasted out of the chest, and everyone in the chamber disappeared into the strange cloud.

A loud _thud_! echoed all throughout the preparation chamber as Kanda and Lavi heaved the black sarcophagus up against the wall. Allen was literally jumping up and down with excitement. "Jesus, Allen," Lavi groaned, clutching at his throbbing forehead. "All your jumping is making my headache worse. Care to stop being so bloody excited, will ya?"

"I can't do such a thing, Lavi!" Allen exclaimed, and you could almost see stars gleaming dramatically in his silver-grey eyes. "I've been dreaming about this ever since I was a little girl!"

Kanda frowned and glanced at the sarcophagus, before looking back at Allen with an incredulous expression on his face. "You've been dreaming about _dead guys_?"

Allen threw him a dirty look before refocusing his attention and energies at the sarcophagus in front of him. This was it. The pinnacle of his not-so-pleasant life. The twist that would make all his miseries go away. Hell, Allen was so happy, he barely remembered that he had a head-splitting headache brought about by the tons of alcohol he consumed last night. God, he couldn't remember anything after that encounter with those black-robed desert people. He couldn't even remember how he ended up sleeping on Kanda's lap, and covered with Kanda's jacket as a makeshift blanket. The British man had tried to ask the older man about it, but Kanda was acting a bit strangely ever since he woke up.

_I wonder what's wrong with him again, _he wondered idly, but those thoughts didn't remain for long as the sarcophagus in front of him was powerful enough to push all this other concerns away.

"Oh dear," Allen gasped as his nimble fingers brushed the dust and cobwebs of the lid. "This man…oh my, all the sacred spells had been chiseled off. The hieratics and hieroglyphics that protected the deceased in his journey to the after life have been removed! This man…was cursed…he was doomed!" The white-haired man could not help but pale in bewilderment. This had been the first time he had seen such a thing. What had this person done to deserve such a treatment even in death?

However, it seemed that Kanda and Lavi were too preoccupied to care.

"Tough break," Kanda muttered, obviously unsympathetic.

"Yeah, I'm all tears now," Lavi deadpanned. "Now can't we just go on with the opening and see who's the unlucky bloke inside this thing? Before my brain decides to commit suicide?"

"It did that a long time ago, Lavi," Allen retorted, rolling his eyes. He couldn't believe these guys. Couldn't they be more interested in what they just discovered here? It wasn't every day that a group of under-equipped archeologists found a cursed sarcophagus. Those Bembridge scholars would surely be writhing in envy if they found out about this.

Allen took the key and mounted it on the lock, twisting it around until a clicking sound was heard. He then stepped back as the two stronger men took hold of the lid and started to tug on it. The British man stood a few feet away, holding his breath and waiting restlessly for the coffin to open and reveal a new found, beautifully shriveled corpse of an evil blasphemer who had been cursed in this life and the next.

Kanda and Lavi grunted in frustration as the lid turned out to be more resilient than they first expected. "Can't we just stick some dynamite on it and—"

"NO!" Allen hollered, his expression downright horrified. The look on his face made Kanda smirk and release a low snicker. "Just kidding, sheesh. Don't get your balls in a knot, beansprout. If you have balls, that is."

"Hey, Yu, can't we just focus on opening this thing?" Lavi interrupted, having no patience for any of his colleagues' bickering today. "You can have your love quarrel later own, after Al's bonded with his precious mummy."

"Call me by my first name again and _you'll _be the one bonding with this mummy. In the afterlife, of course," Kanda growled, though redirected his attention to the lid. "Fucking lid is stuck."

"No, no, it's opening. Look," Lavi commented, and indeed, the lid was slowly but surely giving away. Allen gulped and his breathing hitched as his heart started to palpitate. The sound of his heartbeat was deafening to his ears, like a loud, nerve-wrecking drum roll that was drastically increasing the suspense-filled atmosphere.

It was opening…slowly…just a little more…slowly…slowly…slowly…

"AAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!"

"What the fuck is this?" David and Jasdero hollered at the same time, both of their pistols pointed at the chest. "Don't tell my this is some type of acid spray like before 'cause I will seriously freak out," Road screeched in anger as she hastily brushed the white dust off her skin.

"Calm down, Road. It's just dust," Sheryll explained while dusting some of the white stuff off his sleeves as well. As the white cloud cleared, the man saw something inside the wooden chest. "This is…" he gasped as he lifts a heavy burlap bag from the box, and opens it. Only Lulu gasped when Sheryll took out the big black book from the case.

"The Book of the Dead," Lulu whispered, struck speechless. "I can't believe that it really exists."

"I've got the same thoughts, Lulu," Sheryll replied, holding the book up with great reverence. "I've heard stories about it, but I never truly believed in its existence. This, my friends," he paused, looking at his companions. "Is a very priceless treasure."

"You're shitting me!" David growled, angrily kicking the sand beneath his feet. "I wouldn't trade that thing for a bronze spittoon!"

"Yeah! It's supposed to be made out of pure gold, right? I see black not gold. Where's our treasure?" Jasdero hissed, violently kicking the chest in his anger. The chest shook, and a second later, one side of it fell off, revealing another secret compartment.

"Whoa," Road mused, jumping off Skin's shoulders as she and the twins approached the contents. "This is…" All three of them were at loss of words as they stared at the four, heavily jeweled canopic jars hidden inside the secret compartment. Sheryll saw the fascination in his daughter's eyes and smiled. "There's your treasure."

"Is he supposed to look like that?" Kanda sneered in disgust.

"…"

"Well, beansprout?"

Allen couldn't think of anything to reply to Kanda's question. He was far too shocked, horrified, petrified, mortified, and revolted by the sight of the corpse hanging in front of them. His skin paled even further, and as Allen continued to stare at that "relic" exhibited right before his very eyes, he could feel some sort of bone-chilling fear slowly crawling up his spine. There was something about this "thing" that made him want to cower in fear, and it wasn't only because of _it's _current appearance as of the moment.

"…N-No, it's not supposed to be like that," Allen finally replied, his voice cracked as he was still in the process of recovering his wits. He moved forward hesitantly, half expected a hundred maggots or so to pour out of the mummy's empty eye sockets. The revulsion and disbelief was very much evident on his youthful face. "I…I've never seen a mummy look so…so—"

"Juicy," his two other companions blurted out at the same time.

"…Yes," Allen sighed, resisting the urge to smack the two for their lack of tact in choosing less disturbing words. "He's probably more than four thousand years old and still…still decomposing," the British man aired out, wonder and awe now dominating his expression. His moment of fear was gone; now his curiosity had taken the role of becoming his driving force. That insatiable lust for discovery and knowledge made it possible for him to endure, even the most extreme cases such as this one.

He leaned closer to the mummy and took greater note of the details. He ignored the putrid smell of decay that hung about the four thousand year old corpse, and studied the "juicy" appearance of his tissues, as if the skin was violently ripped off his very body. And he could still see unusual bite marks belonging to some sort of small bug littered all throughout the corpse's muscles. He also noticed how they wasn't dried out like the usual mummies. Surely, this man didn't go through the proper procedures of embalming and mummification. There weren't even marks of incision on his chest to prove that the ritual of taking out the vital organs took place.

"Hey, Al. After you're done making out with Mr. Juicy there, check this out," Lavi interrupted him as he gave his friend a rough jab on the ribs before pointing at the interior of the coffin's lid. Just as Allen was about to give his one-eyed friend a good ol' smack between the eyes, his attention was caught by the contemplative look on Kanda's face as he stared at whatever was on the coffin's lid.

"This guy was buried alive, wasn't he?" The Asian man muttered, his expression blank and completely unreadable as he started at the deep scratch marks and the dried blood that were all over the coffin lid's interior.

The sudden, chilling silence descended upon the trio as all of them looked back at the mangled corpse of whoever it was that was buried before he was even dead. A whole minute later, Allen recovered from his shock, and knelt down beside Kanda to get a closer look at the scratch marks. They were very deeply carved onto the black stone, and the white-haired man could easily feel the amount of desperation ravaging within that corpse as it fought to live. As he started touching the scratch marks however, he realized something.

"He left a message," Allen muttered, leaning closer as he started to decipher the rough hieratics drawn on the lid's black interior. "Death," he announced, in a rather airy voice that made him sound like he was possessed by something. "Is only the beginning."

…

"Holy shit, dude," Lavi squeaked, stepping warily away from the coffin. "That is so messed up."

"Fuck, where's my gun?" Kanda hissed, looking back to the spot where their belongings were stored. The one-eyed American shot him an anxious look, and a suspicious one too, which questioned who exactly was going to be the primary target of his bullets this time. "What are you going to do? Shoot him?" He asked incredulously as he gestured at the revolting corpse.

"If he decides to wake up, hell yeah!"

**A/N: There you go. OMG I AM REALLY SO VERY VERY VERY SORRY FOR THE TWO-MONTH DELAY ON THIS CHAPTER. School finally started in our side of the world, and hell adjusting to it was not as easy as the Internet proclaimed it to be. **

**Just a few days after the first day of school and we were faced with a 200-item written test that dried my brain cells out, leaving no more creative juices for this story. D: **

**I'M REALLY SO SORRY. D:**

**And to those who are fans of Handicapped Love, I'm so sorry as well. I'm trying, I really am, to get a grip on that fic's plot and write the next chapter, but the endless Geometry postulates, axioms, theorems, and fucking word problems are keeping me from unleashing whatever's left of my creative mind. **

**I LOVE YOU ALL AND I SWEAR I WON'T ABANDON ANY OF MY DGM FICS. JUST GIVE ME SOME TIME, PLEASE.**

**Because of my hectic schedule, please expect, a 4-week gap between the next updates. DD: I know it sucks, but I have to pay attention to school too. 11****th**** grade is a vital year in any high schooler's life. =w= I have to pass it with flying colors, or else I'll never be the doctor I want to be. **


	8. justice and jeopardy

**A/N: Un-beta-ed, but I wanted to update ASAP, so forgive any spelling or grammatical errors at the moment!**

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**CHAPTER 8: JUSTICE AND JEOPARDY**

* * *

Guns. Knives. Bombs. Drugs. Poison. Women on their period. PMS.

If he had the time (or the interest) to actually write something, Kanda (with his epic near-death experiences) could definitely create an encyclopedia about all the possible things in the world that are lethal enough to _physically_ harm a human being. Ninety-nine percent of the all the information would have come from his own, personal experience, (he'd rather _die_ than willingly _ask _other people what they think) while the remaining one percent would be something he made up. But never, even in his wildest dreams, had Kanda ever considered the possibility of being killed by a _book._

Sure, maybe if you had a 60-kg book and pummeled people with it until you crushed their skulls, but hey, to be killed by _reading a book? _No fucking way.

"I'll seriously kill you, you fucking moron!" Kanda snarled as he grabbed and mercilessly crushed all the locusts that dared to invade his personal space. "Why the fucking god did you have to read that motherfucking book? Jesus-fucking-Christ, you've unleashed the plagues on us all!"

"Oh my god, are you serious?" Lavi exclaimed, looking at the Asian man with a shell-shocked expression as his still-boozed up mind finally managed to put the pieces together:

1. His lovely, lovely Allen getting adorably jealous of American creep, Sherman Camelot, who claimed that he had uncovered the infamous (but useless) Book of the Dead.

2. His lovely Allen so sexily stealing the Book of the Dead from creepy American freaks.

3. His sneakily little Allen opening the book with the key _Lavi_ stole from, er, _found_ in Kanda's pocket.

4. His curious Allen so eagerly turning to the first page, randomly choosing a passage, and reading it out loud with his epicly awesome British accent.

5. Sky turns dark (not good) and winds give off strange high-pitched wail.

6. Locusts appear out of nowhere and start crawling into his pants.

7. One almost bit off his penis.

"OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD, OH MY FUCKING GOD, Allen, Yuu, we are so fucking screwed—!" Lavi's squealing hysteria was abruptly cut short as he felt the hot barrel of a recently fired gun pressing on his temple. "One more word, Cyclops," Kanda growled, his voice so heavily laced with murder Lavi could almost see the blood dripping from his mouth. "And I'll make sure that you don't get to witness the _rest_ of the plagues."

"Calm down, both of you!" Allen hollered grabbing Kanda's wrist with one hand, while the other one continued to brush locusts off his head. "This isn't the ten plagues," he started as he regained composure. "It's generational. Every so many years, the infamous locusts of Egypt have a population explosion and they all take flight to migrate. All of this is just a coincidence!" Allen explained, rolling his eyes at Kanda's horrified face. "Oh come on, Kanda! I'm _trying_ to respect you for once, and actually _pretend_ that you're smart enough to realize that all these stuff about curses and plagues are a bunch of horsefeathers. "

"Really?" Lavi asked, looking at Allen with hopeful eyes. Allen would have given him a reassuring smile if Lavi's face hadn't suddenly turned into a horrified expression, quite similar to Kanda's. "Lavi?"

"Tell it to Sweeney, brat," Kanda retorted and gestured at something behind Allen. "Look behind you." The white-haired man, on the other hand, made the mistake of stepping back before looking.

_Squish._

Allen grew very still as he realized what had happened. "No way…" he murmured, and Allen's skin almost became as pale as his hair as he heard a whole symphony of low pitch croaks right behind him. "Oh, _dear Lord._" One of the frogs licked his exposed ankle.

"So," Kanda said, smirking as Allen jumped so high, his head hit the low stone ceiling with a pretty nasty _bump!_ "You think that 'generational' shit of yours applied to frogs too?"

* * *

"_What the fuck is happening, Sherill?" _

The Americans weren't having the time of their lives either. Earlier that night, most of them were still basking in the glittering light of their new found jeweled canopic jars, and leering at the unfortunate trio who found themselves nothing but a vengeful mummy.

Now, they were running away from a horde of flesh eating roaches.

"Mind your language, darling." It was amazing how Sherill could still find the time to remind his daughter about her manners when black bugs were snapping at their ankles. "Anyway, Mr. Walker decided to read from the Book of the Dead, and whatever he read unleashed the ten-plagues of Egypt," he answered, scornful. _He_ should have been the one to unleash the curse, not some second-rate homosexual who couldn't even afford more fashionable clothes. "There's nothing written about flesh-eating dung beetles, however, wild animals are in danger of extinction at the moment so I guess the curse decided to improvise and use beetles instead. Amazing, isn't it?"

"Not funny, Sherill," Lulu Bell mentioned, gritting her teeth as she threw down her torch in order to momentarily ward off some beetles. "I warned you about this. You didn't listen. Now we're all doomed to suffer the curse of the Hom-dai."

"What's 'ta 'om-dai, Davy?" Jasdero asked as he shot another load at the fast-approaching beetles. The bullets managed to blow off some of them, while the rest continued advancing, unaffected.

"Uh, somethin' related to dyin' at home, me think?" David answered, while firing his guns the same way his twin was doing. "That sucks but at least it ain't anythin' nasty like gettin' eaten by these roaches over 'ere."

"Shut up, you morons!" Road hissed, not at all happy at how things turned out. Why the fuck was she in this stupid expedition again? She was a fucking _teen_ for heaven's sake. She should be at home, painting her nails, instead of running away from disgusting and lethal bugs. "Just keep shooting!"

"Bullets aren't cheap, ya know?"David whined as he reloaded his pistol for the umpteenth time. "Can't we just throw dynamite at 'em?"

"And risk having the whole tunnel collapse on us? _Oh my god_, were you always this stupid, or are you just making a special effort today?" Road groaned, massaging her temples as her dad struggled under her weight. He couldn't possibly ask her to _run_; Sherill, after all, was the "World's Best Dad" and it was his duty to keep her as comfortable as possible, even in the brink of a possibly horrible death. "Skin has even more sense than both of you losers combined!"

It was then that Lulu Bell noticed something.

"Hey," she warily stated, struggling to keep her panic in control. "Where the hell is Skin?"

* * *

Somewhere in the deep, dark bowels of Hamunaptra, a huge, muscular, candy-loving dark-skinned man groped aimlessly in the darkness, while still munching on a good amount of gummy bears.

"Road? Lulu Bell? David? Jasdero?" Skin called out, pieces of candy spilling out of his mouth. No one was answering him. This disturbed the large man, yet he continued to munch on those sweet goodies. "Where are you?"

The air suddenly became very, _very _cold.

"Uh, Sherill? Is that you?" There was someone standing about ten feet away from him, although with the very limited lighting, he couldn't see who it was. But what he knew was that this person gave off a similarly creepy vibe that Sherill often gave off, though, he failed to notice that such vibe had multiplied by a hundredfold.

Skin approached the figure while still nervously chewing on the last of his gummy bears. He stretched out his hand to tap the other man's shoulder. "Where are the others? What the hell is going—"

The bigger man gasped as his hand sunk into a certain cavity on the figure's shoulder and immediately pulled back, only to find his hand cover with disgusting, molten flesh grime. Finally realizing what it was that stood before him, the bigger man dropped his now-empty bag of candy and attempted to make a run for it.

Strong, skeletal hands closed around his throat.

* * *

"This is all _your _fucking fault!" Kanda growled as he shot another round of bullets at the chattering mob of _flesh-eating scarabs_ that had suddenly materialized from a hole on the floor. They had been running from them for a good five minutes now, and despite how often the Japanese man had wasted his bullets on them, they just kept on coming. "Reading dangerous shit about a dangerous book…_even if _the book had _explicitly_ warned you _not_ to read it! You're a fucking, suicidal moron, and you've doomed us all!"

"Oh, quit whining and just keep on shooting you bloody prick!" Allen countered, his lungs burning with want for air. He wasn't exactly the athletic type, and running like this, on such uneven footing, was tiring him out faster than he had expected. "It's not like I could help myself! I _am _a scholar unlike uneducated heathens like you!"

"Oh for Christ's sake, just fucking shut it, you two!" Lavi exclaimed, totally unhappy about the most recent turn of events. "Yuu, can't you just throw dynamite at them, or something?"

"Idiot!" Kanda replied, before pausing as he threw another round of bullets at the fast approaching scarabs. "If I did that, the ceiling could collapse on us!"

"I don't want to admit this but he's right, Lavi," Allen grimaced. "These ruins are unstable. One single explosion can bury us _alive, _and believe me when I say I don't want to follow our juicy friend's example any time soon." A chill ran down his spine as the young man remembered the mummy that they had left behind, and the message that was carved in the inner cover of the sarcophagus. _Death is only the beginning. _

Something was nagging him at the back of his mind, something about a curse and how it was related to that unnamed mummy, but Allen chose to ignore it at the moment. After all, curse or not, their immediate concern was how to escape becoming food for a ravaging pack of flesh-eating dung beetles.

They kept on running until they came upon a short bridge over a rather deep canal, with scattered piles of tall flat-topped stones protruding out of the darkness. Allen's eyes widened. "Hey, aren't those pedes—"

"Jump on them!" Kanda ordered, jumping on the nearest pedestal he can find. Lavi immediately followed his example, jumping onto the pedestal beside the Asian man. Allen, however, couldn't find another pedestal near them, and instead jumped onto a grotto at the opposite side. The angry mob of scarabs didn't look like they can fly after them, and instead, carried on crawling across the bridge until they all disappeared into the opening at the other end.

Lavi, after realizing that they were no longer in danger, finally decided to _breathe_.

"Jesus Christ, that was a close one," he sighed, collapsing into an exhausted heap on the pedestal. For such a thin piece of rock, it was holding him up pretty wall. "We held out quite well back there, didn't we, Yuu?" He grinned, though his smile twisted into a curious frown as he noted the anxious look on the other man's face. "Hey, what's the matter buddy?"

"Oi, Cyclops," Kanda hissed, his eyes intensely fixated on something. Lavi followed his gaze, and grew cold at a certain realization. "Where the _fuck_ is that stupid beansprout?"

* * *

Allen had no idea where he was.

The last thing he remembered was accidentally leaning against a certain depression on the grotto's floor, and suddenly, the wall behind him moved, making him fall into the room behind it.

And then, darkness.

The young man sat up and brushed the sand off of his hair, and looked around slowly, fearful of what he might find. It was almost pitch black, but years of working in the dimly lit museum (Cross hated electricity bills) had given his eyes a nearly nocturnal quality that allowed him to see a little, even in the darkest places.

It appeared to be a small, empty room from what he could gather, and at a corner was a dark depression that looked like a door. Allen hesitated – perhaps it wasn't a good idea to go exploring on his own, especially when he had no light or weapons to use. But then again, the thought of flesh-eating scarabs cornering him in there didn't quite appeal to the British lad.

Finally, he decided to just leave the place. If something came up, at least he'd had somewhere to _run to_ and not get trapped in a room such as this.

"Alright," he muttered and pushed himself up, only to hear a nasty ripping sound. Looking back, the man realized that the stonewall had trapped a huge part of his skirt. Clucking his tongue in disdain, Allen proceeded to tear off what was left of his "man-dress" and departed the room still wearing a skirt, though this one was knee-length, similar to what the ancient Egyptians had worn. His top had been quite ragged since the start of that night so he had decided to tear if off as well, leaving his young, lean torso completely exposed, save for his left arm, which he decided to keep covered.

He followed the dark corridor, using his hands and eyes to guide him. For some strange reason, his left eye could see in the dark better than his right eye, despite it being damaged in _that_ incident. Allen bit his lip to stop the flood of memories coming in at the most unwanted time, and instead focused on finding a way out of this labyrinth he had stumbled into.

As he rounds a corner, he sees a shaft of moonlight filtering in through a crack on the ceiling, illuminating a certain room. A wave of relief crashes upon him as he sees a figure in the room clad in familiar American clothing.

"Oh thank goodness!" Allen exclaimed as he quickly approached the man whom he know recognized as Skin Bolic, just by his huge build. A small voice at the back of his head warned him, but the smaller man chose to ignore it. He was finally saved! "You're one of the Americans, aren't you? Skin Bolic, wasn't it?"

Just as he reached for him, Skin turned around to face him. The sight that met Allen made him scream in horror and immediately jump back. "W-What on earth…"

Skin Bolic did not have eyes.

The American opened his mouth, as if to ask for help, but no words, just moans came out. Allen grew cold, realizing that the man's tongue was missing as well.

Skin made an attempt to go near him, but Allen backed away, hyperventilating in fear. His attempted to escape, but before he could turn around, he unexpectedly bumped into something.

The smell of decaying flesh was too sharp to ignore.

"AAAAHHHHHHHH!" Allen screamed again as he fell on the ground, crawling away in blind haste before he found himself backed against the wall. His gray eyes were wide with fear as he stared at the figure in front of him, which studied him hungrily with the golden eyes that were once Skin Bolic's.

"Anck-su-namun?" The mummy called out to him, in a voice that made Allen's blood run cold.

* * *

Kanda stared at the grotto's wall as if it were the gates of Hell. If it weren't for Lavi stopping him, he would've blown up that piece of rock ages ago.

"Now, now, let's not get hasty, Yuu!" Lavi exclaimed as he warily watched the man's hand inching slowly towards the pocket where he kept the dynamite. "What if Allen's just behind this thing? You could end up killing him if you make the wall explode."

"Then what the fuck are we supposed to do then?" The other man snarled, slamming his hand on the wall. "What the hell is this thing anyway?"

"Some sort of trap, I suppose," Lavi mused, his fingers tapping his chin in idle thought. "Anyway, there's got to be some sort of lever here somewhere that could—"

His musings were cut off by a round of screaming, followed by the very familiar chatter of a hundred flesh eating scarabs. Kanda and Lavi turned their head towards the direction of the tunnel they had just come from, and out of there came the Americans as well as a lone Egyptian digger.

"Run, you sons'-a-bitches!" David screamed as they crossed the bridge. "RUN!"

Kanda and Lavi didn't waste any more time by the grotto and followed the Americans example as they all hurried into the other end of the bridge. The digger they were with suddenly tripped and fell behind them however, and although Lavi hesitated and thought of stopping to help the guy, it was too late. The digger screamed in horror as the scarabs crawled over him and literally _ate through him, _scattering after a few seconds and going after the other humans again, leaving behind a half-eaten skeleton in their wake.

"Oh holy, mother-fuckin' shit!" Road screeched as she looked back and witnessed it all. "That was so screwed up! Hurry up, dad, or we are going to die!"

"Like I said, don't say bad words, my dear," Sherill sighed, though he did pick up speed.

"Jesus, do ya think tha's what happened to Skin, as well?" Jasdero panicked, firing continuously at the horde behind them.

"The hell I know!" David replied, mirroring his twin's actions.

"What? You lost someone too?" Lavi asked, and Kanda inwardly cringed at that statement. The redhead had made it sound like they'd lost Allen for good.

"Whaddya mean 'too'— "

"YOU FUCKING LOST ALLEN?" Road hollered, reacting so violently that Sherill almost lost his balance. Almost. "Road, my dear, calm down—"

"The hell I'm calming down!" The teenage girl seethed as she turned to glare at both Lavi and Kanda. "The fuck's wrong with you guys? How useless can you two get? I don't care if either of you had died – you should've fucking saved Allen's pretty ass!"

"Shut up!" Kanda and Lavi shouted in unison, surprising them both though neither made a comment about it. "We're fucking worried as well!" Lavi grumbled, and pointed at Kanda's direction. "Even Yuu is, too! Though he'd rather die than admit it!"

"The hell I am," Kanda countered, though he didn't sound entirely convincing.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," Lavi replied, dismissing him. "Anyway, we're looking for him too, so shut yer trap you little bitch. It's not like you could do anything to save him if it came down to it."

"Do _not_ talk to my daughter like that," Sherill warned, and the ominous aura he gave off was enough to make Lavi take a few paces away from the man. Road stuck her tongue out at the redhead but didn't say anything else.

* * *

The mummy took another step towards Allen, who was going out of his mind in fear. If only he had something – gun, rock, fire, _anything_ that he could use to defend himself. But here he was, cornered and not to mention, basically _half-naked_ to booth.

The sand beneath the creature seemed to magnetize around him, swirling and dancing between his flaking skeleton feet. Even the air was being repelled, forming some sort of vacuum over the creature's body, and the closer it got, the more difficult it was to breathe. Allen could not move. His eyes flickered towards Skin Bolic, desperate for any kind of help. But the unfortunate American could only moan and groan in reply.

The mummy then parted its fetid lips and a fresh tongue flapped between his rotten teeth.

"_Come with me, Prince Anck-su-namun."_

Allen closed his eyes, and was just about to resign himself to a horrible death when suddenly, Kanda dashed into the room and slammed against Allen's shaking body. "Oi, beansprout!" The younger man gasped in surprise at this unexpected turn of events, but before he feel any form of relief, his eyes trailed back to the monster that was just as surprised as he was.

"Stop playing around! We've got to fucking get out of…" Kanda stops as he sees the look of terror on Allen's eyes and immediately goes frigid as he sensed an evil and very _familiar _aura from behind him. This aura…it was the same as back then.

The Japanese man slowly turned around. "Holy shit!"

The creature roars at them, its mouth stretching down into inhuman proportions, thousands of years of hate and decay reflected upon its horrific, primordial screech.

Allen jumps and whimpers in fear, but Kanda, after spending years of being _afraid_ of this thing, had had enough. "RAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!" he roars angrily in return and blasts him with his elephant gun.

"Let's get the hell outta here, beansprout!" Kanda barked and dragged the shell-shocked Allen out of the room.

Sand and wind violently whipped through the ruins of Hamunaptra as the two men stumbled out of into the surface, only to find themselves face to face with ten, black-robed men. And all of them were heavily armed.

"Shit."

* * *

Daisya never believed in karma, really. He never thought that all his bastardly acts of betrayal, thievery, and double-crossing would one day bit him in the ass. That was, until he found himself face to face with a monster.

"AAAAHHH!" The man screamed, his cowl threatening to fall off as he staggered away from the mummy walking towards him. He fired his gun at it, but regardless of where it hit, the mummy just kept walking towards him, completely undeterred.

"Oh shit," he whimpered, scared shitless as he dropped the gun and grabbed the chains around his neck, pulling out about a half a dozen religious symbols and icons dangling on each chain. First he took a Christian crucifix, made the sign of the Cross and blessed himself in English, but the mummy was not at all affected. He continued backing away slowly, using one religious icon after another, muttering about half a dozen prayers in Arabic, Hindi, Chinese, and Latin, but just as the Christian prayer, none of them worked.

He found himself pressed against a wall, and saw the mummy slowly reach out towards him. Tears fall from the man's eyes in sheer fear as he takes out his last icon, the Star of David, and says his last prayer, in Hebrew.

The mummy stops.

"_The language of the slaves?"_

The creature withdrew his hand and stared at Daisya quizzically, while the latter was still frigid with fear. _"I may have some use for you. And the reward," _it paused to take something out of its ragged loins. "_Will be great."_ Daisya gasped at the jewels on the mummy's hands. He realized that he might not only get out of this alive. He might actually get out of it alive _and _rich.

"Yes, my Lord," he replied in Hebrew, as that was the only language that the mummy seemed to understand. "What do you want me to do?"

The mummy raised its other hand to reveal that it had been holding a broken canopic jar, one of the jars that Sherill and the other Americans had discovered. "_Where are the other canopic jars?"_

* * *

"Oh boy," Allen muttered under his breath as he and Kanda raised their hands in surrender. Among the black-robed men were the Americans, all kneeling down with their hands behind their hands, and Lavi, who shot his smaller friend an apologetic look. "Sorry Al," he mouthed.

The bespectacled man who had spoken the other night, and was evidently their leader, stepped towards the two newcomers. Kanda growled, and would've made a run for it if he hadn't known what awaited him inside the ruins. "What do you want?" He snapped.

"We wanted you to leave this place," the man tersely replied. "But you did not heed our warning. Now, you have awakened the beast and doomed us all."

"B-But, Kanda already took care of _that_," Allen blurted out, frowning in confusion. "Right?" He nudged the older man for some support, but Kanda stood, scowling silently.

"No mortal weapon can kill this creature. He is not of this world," the man answered him. His eyes flickered towards Kanda. "I believe that your friend here has come to realize that as well."

"B-But—"

Allen was cut off by resounding gasps coming from the Americans as several of the black-robed men dragged Skin out of the crevice, vacant sockets in place of his eyes. The British man almost threw up; seeing it in a well-lighted place was just _horrible._

"You bastards!" Lulu exclaimed furiously as she ignored the black-robed men and ran to Skin's side. "What the hell did you do to him?"

"We saved his life," replied one of the men holding Skin. "The creature did not want _just_ his eyes and tongue."

"He should serve as an example," their leader addressed them once again. "Now leave, _all _of you, quickly, before the creature recovers and finishes you all."

"Er, you're not going to kill us?" Lavi asked, earning a glare from all the others. "Great job giving them the idea," Allen groaned, annoyed. "Fuckin' moron," Kanda muttered.

Luckily, the bespectacled man pretended not to hear him. Instead he, and all the other robed men, started to head back into the crevice. "Wait! What are you doing?" Allen panicked. Though he may not like these men, he did not entertain the idea of them suffering a fate just like Skin's or even worse. "That thing's a monster! There's no way you can –"

"It is our duty to at least, _try._" The man stared at Allen with an unrelenting gaze that reflected his resolve. "Know this, the creature will be coming for you," he continued, his voice hushed and urgent. "You men who have dared open the chest," his eyes briefly glanced at the stricken Americans, "and _you,"_ he said as he looked back at Allen. "You who have awakened him. He must consummate the curse. And until he does, he will never eat, he will never sleep, and he will never," at that he paused and gave the British man a long stare. "Ever, _stop._"

* * *

**A/N: So…yeah… it's been, what, three years, huh?**

**SHIT I AM SO SO SORRY!**

**I know I promised a lot, but shit, I didn't know that life would be such a fucking asshole. Anyway, I think, no, I HOPE, that I've pulled my shit together, because I really want to finish this story. I'm slowly reviving myself you know, slowly and surely. **

**And yeah, DGrayman is also slowly reviving itself, huh? Now that Kanda's not dead anymore, my muses for this story (and for all my other Yullen stories) are finally back!**


	9. kanda and kitty cats

**A/N: Yes, I updated before Kanda's birthday because I realized that I would be celebrating his birthday by drowning myself in all kinds of YULLEN FLUFF, hence I wouldn't have the time to update on the said date. So yeah. ADVANCED HAPPY BIRTHDAY YOU DAMN AWKWARD HOT PERSON YOU**

**Actually, I would've updated a day earlier, if it hadn't been so difficult finding suitable "K" words for the title. I mean, who knew that there would be so few English K-words lying around? So I just decided to use Kanda's name instead. What's more suitable than that? : (it sounds so _awful_ though. Ugh.)  
**

**Again, still unbeta-ed. My past beta, LUI, _died_ or something. Idk. She just disappeared, leaving a short note about changing fandoms or something like that. **

**Yes, I've been abandoned.**

* * *

**CHAPTER 9: KANDA AND KITTY CATS  
**

* * *

"What the hell are you doing with _these_?" Kanda gasped, fingers gingerly holding up a black, lace brassiere and a matching *liberty corset that had more ribbons than the Japanese man cared to count.

"Nothing!" Allen snapped, blushing furiously. He was _so_ going to kill Lavi the moment he sees the man. Despite being his best friend, that one-eyed plague did not have any right to mess with his wardrobe like this. Allen made a grab for the lingerie but Kanda easily evaded his arms and instead, threw the undergarments into the suitcase on the bed that already had a small mound of hastily packed clothes in it.

"I don't really care about your cross-dressing tendencies, beansprout," he scoffed, striding up to the closet drawer to remove more of the other man's clothes. "But what I do care about is that thousand-year old rotting piece of shit that's about to come for all of us if we don't get outta here soon."

"It's _three thousand_-year old, you uncultured twat," the British man sniffed, and began to unpack all the clothes that had been haphazardly thrown into the suitcase. "Anyway, we can't just _run_. We should help out in stopping him!"

"Forget it. We're out the door, down the hall, and gone."

"No, we're not."

"Oh yes, we fucking are."

Kanda continued packing Allen's clothes, while the other man fervently unpacked everything. "No, we're _not_," said the shorter man, pressing on. "We were the ones who woke him up. It's only decent for us to find someway to fix things."

"_We?_ No, _you_ woke him up," Kanda corrected, dumping another heap of clothes on the bed, oblivious to the other man's attempt to re-organize everything. " _We _did not read from that cursed book. _You _did. I told _you_ not to fucking mess with that creepy thing."

"Yes, yes, whatever," Allen admitted impatiently, not at all sorry for what he did. Well, in truth, he was sorry, but not enough to openly admit it in front of the other man. "That doesn't change the fact that _we_ are all doomed if _we_ don't do anything."

"Are you kidding me?" Kanda suddenly exclaimed, making Allen jump. The ex-colonel turned around, angrily stretching a clown-printed white pair of boxers as a look of disgust colored his face. "Why the hell would you wear this _shit_?"

"Good Lord, stop commenting on my wardrobe!" The shorter man snapped, snatching the undergarment from Kanda's hands before the man could tear it apart. "I happen to like clowns."

"Even if I liked them – and I don't – I wouldn't fucking having one smiling on my goddamn crotch! Jesus Christ, this is beyond faggotry, beansprout. You are more touched in the head than I give you credit for."

"Why, _thank you,_" Allen replied curtly, carefully folding his boxers and putting them back where Kanda took them with his unholy hands. "Back to the point – we've got to stop that bloody mummy!"

Kanda sighed in exasperation. "And how do _you_ even expect to do that? I know you heard what that four-eyed bandit said back in Hamunaptra. No mortal weapons can kill that thing."

"Well, we'll just have to find _immortal _ones then."

"There's that 'we' again. When will you get it, hoser? I'm fucking outta here!"

Kanda dumped a handful of red ribbons into the suitcase, but Allen caught him off-guard and roughly slammed the lid on his fingers. The Japanese man yelped and cursed loudly in his native tongue, storming out of the room with the British man following him close behind.

"According to the Book of the Dead," Allen started, ignoring Kanda's pain. "Once this creature has been reborn, his curse will spread. And as he grows in strength, so will his curse, until he consumes everyone and destroys the world!"

Kanda, however, was too busy nursing his injured fingers to care. "Uh, yeah, so? Is that my problem?"

Allen regarded him with an incredulous expression. He did not expect the older man to be _this_ stupid.

"It's everybody's problem, you bloody git!"

The Japanese man had had enough. "Look, beansprout, I appreciate you for savin' my life and shit, but when I signed on, I agreed to take you out there and bring you back in one piece. And I did. So now we're even, end of job, end of story, contract terminated!"

He was about to add a couple more profanities to that statement, just to emphasize on the point he was making, but the look on the British man's face made the words die down his throat. Kanda did not understand why the other man suddenly looked so injured at the statement.

"What?" He gritted, unnerved by the other's expression.

"So that's what I am to you?" Allen muttered almost inaudibly, but Kanda heard him loud and clear. Both of them avoided each other's eyes. "A contract?"

Allen, for the life of him, didn't know exactly why he was feeling so hurt. It was just that, after all the near-death experiences they've gone through together, and all the times they've bickered and attempted shoot each other or wish either one a very painful death, it felt like…like they had become friends of some sort. It was painful to think that he was the only one who was thinking that way.

The silence almost made it impossible to breathe.

"Che," Kanda reacted, breaking the heavy atmosphere. "What else did you expect? Anyway, it's your call, sprout. Either you tag along with me, or you stay here and play the wimping hero."

Allen raised his face to his, defiant. "I'm staying."

"Fine."

"_Fine_."

Another standoff resumed between them, until Kanda got fed up with the awkwardness and slammed the door on Allen's face.

Allen retreated back to his bedroom, somberly organizing all the scattered clothes as he tried his best not to cry.

* * *

The bar was filled with customers, even if it was literally the middle of the day. Hard liquor was passed on from one hand to another, and boisterous laughter echoed throughout the halls. However, amidst the jolly men and their jolly drinks, a not-so-jolly man in his thirties was shit-faced drunk and had began to talk to any unfortunate soul he chanced upon. He looked gaunt, shockingly pale despite the Egyptian sun, and while most of his hair was black, a section of it was white, which puffed up and curled on his forehead, like the tail of some dead animal. The dominantly dark clothes he wore did not help his image, and from afar, one could almost suspect him to be a European vampire.

He did seem to be European, and the British WWI fighter pilot gear he wore over his clothes attested to that.

"I'm the last of those stationed here, you know," he slurred, nudging his annoyed seatmate who had no idea who he was. "All the others, they either ditched me or died in the desert."

The customer had had enough of him and roughly shoved him away. The vampire-like man staggered out of his seat and clumsily found his way over to Kanda and Lavi at the bar, not missing a beat as he continued his drunk speech.

"Ever since the Great War, I haven't done anything productive with my life. Actually, this is the first time in months that I've gone out of my room." The man leaned against Kanda, too drunk to notice the sudden increase of murderous aura behind him. "Most of the time I was just inside, tending to my plants, and staring at the picture of my woman. Oh, she's such a beauty! Eliade, no one can ever compare to you!" He exclaimed, raising his glass to give a toast to a lady long gone.

"Hey, Krory, sir, would you please get outta there? You know, 'cuz Yuu's already reaching for his sword, and I don't think staying there is such a good idea," Lavi interjected, pulling the poor guy out of Kanda's reach before the guy could violently decapitate him. Lavi then discreetly passed him on to another group of unfortunate sods that now had to deal with his sob stories.

"Wha'ta gloomy fella' tha's fer sure," a voice came up from behind them.

Kanda and Lavi didn't need to turn around to know who it was.

"We be takin' these seats, thank ya very mu'," Jasdero cackled, and the twins slid into the seats beside Lavi and Kanda, with Lavi mediating between them and the violent Japanese. The brothers may look and act stupid most of the time, but they had enough sense to stay clear of a trigger-happy, sword-wielding wild animal when they see one.

"Whatcha doing her, fellas?" Lavi asked, good-naturedly. "Aren't you supposed to be fussing over your eye-less pall?"

"Nah, Lulu's got that covered," David replied, downing his tequila shot in one gulp. "She's shit ass fussy, o'er him tha's fer sure. Been runnin' 'round Cairo all day, buying candy an' bandages an' shit."

"Right now, she's still out though," another voice chirped and the twins groaned harmoniously.

"The fuck ya doin' here, Road?" Jasdero sneered. "Ain't legal enough to be drinkin' beer, bitch!"

"Shut up, hoser!" The teenager hissed, sucking on her lollipop. "Dad left to deal with some business, and since Lulu's out right now, I'm the one in charge of fucking babysitting for the rest of the afternoon."

"Baby sittin' my ass. You just want us to buy you some shots," David groaned, massaging his temples. Why didn't he just _shoot_ the stupid girl? Oh, right. Sherill.

"Yeah, that too," Road smirked.

"Hey, hey, you're not seriously giving a minor _alcohol_, are you?" Lavi asked them, incredulously. These Americans were just _fucking_ insane. First they give the girl a _gun_. And now, Christ, they're all right with getting her wasted?

"Fuck, you people are messed up," Kanda commented before taking another shot, stealing the words straight out of Lavi's mouth.

The redhead grinned. "I second that shit."

* * *

Skin Bolic did not like strangers.

He especially did not like strangers who had a weird smell, which was uncomfortably familiar.

But Lulu Bell had done all that she could to teach him how to be polite sometimes. So the big man, despite his reservations, decided to give it a try.

Things did not go smoothly, however. It was immensely difficult to try to be polite when his eyes and his tongue were fucking _gone_.

"It's a pleasure to meet you," he attempted to say, but it came out as "Ichkl ah klechkldha kho khit yuh."

"His Grace is pleasured to meet you too," Daisya flawlessly translated.

Skin inwardly sighed. At least they were getting somewhere.

"Prince Tyki Mikk gives his thanks for your hospitality," the cowl-crowned man continued. "And also, would like to give his thanks…for your eyes…and your tongue."

A chill ran down Skin's spine.

"But I am afraid," Daisya murmured, in a low, eerie voice, and Skin, though blind, could almost see him slowly pacing around the room, like vulture simply waiting for him to die. "More is needed. The Prince says that he must consummate the curse that you and your little American friends have brought down upon yourselves."

A look of pure fear registered on Skin's face as the reality of his situation dawned upon him, and finally, he recognized the stench that was coming from the person seated right across him.

Daisya was no longer speaking as he hurriedly backed away and ran out of the room, running away as fast as his legs would take him. He did not want to witness the events that followed.

Skin staggered out of his chair, knocking over several things as he desperately groped the air for a door that would be his escape. He could hear the other man rising, and steps, silent as death, slowly approaching him.

Then followed the sound of his own screaming.

* * *

_Damn, that teen could totally hold her alcohol, _thought Lavi as he watched a flushed Road order for another round, while her companions were already too drunk to notice that they were _paying_ for the drinks that the girl had ordered.

"All right! A toast to the incredibly hot Allen, for damning us!" She cheered, and despite the implications of what she said, Kanda and Lavi couldn't help but join the toast.

Three shot glasses clinked together. Kanda, Lavi, and Road slugged them down at the same time – and simultaneously spat them out as well, together with half of the bar's population.

"What the fuck was that?" Road blenched, wiping the red liquid off of her mouth. "It tasted like—"

"Blood."

Kanda and the rest of the people at the bar stared at the water fountain at the center of the establishment; it's water now bearing an ominous shade of red.

"And the rivers and waters of Egypt went red and were as blood…" Lavi muttered under his breath, wide-eyed as he quoted the Old Testament.

Kanda suddenly jumped from and bar and ran towards the exit. "Shit! _He's_ here!"

"Huh?" Lavi jolted. "Who's here?"

"Who else?" Road cried, violently kicking David and Jasdero back to their senses. "It's the fuckin' mummy, hoser!"

* * *

Lightning flashed across the sky, followed by a startling peal of thunder that did not help a certain librarian's nerves at all.

Groaning inwardly, Allen knelt down to pick up the books he had dropped in surprise. "Why am I so jumpy today…" he wondered out loud as he examined the books with an apprehensive expression, looking for any marks, creases, or damage from the fall. He had been feeling very uneasy since that fight with Kanda a couple of hours ago, and had decided to visit the hotel's library to get his mind off of troublesome things.

Reading did help – in fact, he had found himself so immersed in a book about different Egyptian sex rituals that he did not notice the sudden change in the weather until he finally stepped out of the room.

_That's strange, _Allen mused, brows furrowed in concern. _It's summer right now, and even if it weren't, it rarely rains in Cairo. I've never seen a storm this big before._

"Sprout!"

_Perhaps this is one of those occasional blunders in the season? _The British man continued to speculate, his attention focused solely on the sky.

"Oi, beansprout! Are you deaf!"

_But it's too much of a coincidence. _Allen bit his lower lip in concentration, squinting suspiciously at the ominously dark clouds above him. _For this to happen right after the curse_ –

"DAMN IT ALLEN WALKER!"

The librarian turned just in time to see a red-faced, albeit murderous and familiar Japanese ex-colonel running towards him in an alarming haste. In fact, the way the older man was charging towards him was so frightening, it took a lot out of Allen to stop himself from screaming like some lame British pansy (which he wasn't, despite what other people would say).

"Yes?" Allen asked coolly, feigning disinterest Kanda's haggard appearance. "What is it, Kanda? I thought you had already left, seeing as how I am just a _contract_ to you and nothing else." Despite how neutral he tried to sound, Allen couldn't stop a hint of bitterness from slipping into his tone.

"Look, cut the drama grandma," Kanda snapped. "We got problems."

"_Grandm?_ Why I never—"

Allen's indignant monologue was cut off was a nearby explosion that was so perfectly timed, the British man couldn't help but wonder if Kanda had anything to do with it. But before he could accuse the other man, however, a blood-curdling scream stopped him cold. It had come from the room directly above them.

"He's here!" Kanda growled, drawing out his sword as he made his way towards the nearest flight of stairs, shoving any panicking bystander out of his way.

"He's…what? You mean _that_ creature?" Allen gasped in disbelief, still holding his books close to his chest as he ran up the stairs, evading the stampeding people with much more grace than his ruthless companion "Are you sure?"

Kanda gave him an incredulous look and wildly gestured at the nearest window that provided a clear view of the gigantic maelstrom on the sky and the large quantities of hail and fire that spilled upon the earth. "Pretty damn sure!"

They finally arrived at the room, and Kanda violently kicked the door open, purposely ignoring Allen's cries of protest and respect for other people's privacy.

The sight that greeted them was not a pretty one.

Skin Bolic – or what was left of him – was obviously dead, and neither of the two needed to be a doctor to confirm this. In place of a corpse was a shriveled husk, drained of all kinds of body fluids and organs. The muscles that had once rippled proudly in the man's body were gone, and if it hadn't been for the telltale bone-structure, as well as the half-empty pack of hard candy in the corpse's grasp, Allen wouldn't have recognized him at all. A deep sense of doom crept up to him as his eyes took in every macabre detail of the man's "mummy" and the chill that ravaged his insides grew worse at every second he spent staring at Skin Bolic's body. He had seen a lot of mummies in his lifetime, but this was…just too _horrible_ to compare to anything else.

"Oi, snap out of it."

And that was it. With just that, Kanda saved Allen before the latter could wet his trousers in pure, unbridled fear.

"Screw the body, the real problem's _over there,_" Kanda muttered under his breath, muscles tense as his eyes focused on something that the shorter man hadn't noticed until it was pointed out to him.

Personally, Allen would've preferred to stare at Skin's body for a while longer. After all, Skin's body wasn't moving and moaning like that _thing_ that was writhing in front of his very eyes.

The mummy, from the looks of it, was _regenerating._ A stretch of thick, tanned skin formed over powerful, new musculature, its tendons rippling in youthful energy while its skeleton bulged, reformed, and fortified itself, looking far more formidable than the brittle mass of aging bone that it once was. Rich curls of dark brown hair grew out of its head with alarming speed and settled just beneath the nape of its bare neck in odd, mesmerizing waves. Indeed, it would have been an attractive sight if it weren't for the still-decayed mouth that refused to regenerate like the rest, and instead stretched open into inhuman proportions, releasing an anguished and very pained scream.

Then it was over.

Allen blinked, unable to truly process what he just saw.

Was this really happening? Everything was so bizarre, it felt as if he was being tricked by his mind and – oh dear, was _it_ staring at _him?_

"We are _so _screwed."

He barely registered the sudden gush of wind before realizing that Kanda had charged in without thinking (well, _that_ was expected, he supposed) with sword ready to hack the monster into pieces if he had to.

The mummy, on the other hand, looked _bored_, and without so much as a flick of its wrist, caught Kanda's arm and threw him across the room with amazing strength.

To his credit, the Japanese man recovered a lot more quickly than the mummy had expected, and was able to deliver a clean blow through the creature's head, slicing down his skull until the blade was literally sticking out of his mouth, bits and pieces of molted flesh dripping to the floor.

But the mummy didn't even let look like it was in pain.

Instead, it turned around and grabbed the ex-colonel by the neck, raising him up until Kanda's feet were violently dangling in mid-air, fingers digging into his throat. His skin started to lose the little color it had and it didn't take a genius to realize that the man was beginning to find it difficult to breathe.

The familiarity of the situation didn't escape Allen's notice, but he didn't have time to dwell on the details. Quite instinctively, the British man forgot about his fears (and the fact that he was completely weaponless to begin with), and reached out to grab the arm of the mummy.

The moment Allen's left hand touched the creature's arm, however, it suddenly gave off a cry of pain and dropped Kanda on the floor, instantly backing away from Allen. The mummy nursed his arm as if the Brit had stabbed it with a poisoned spear, and it bore a perplexed expression that mirrored the one that Allen had on his face.

But before any of them could react, the door burst open again to reveal the Americans and Lavi, all seriously drunk and definitely trigger-happy. It took a lot out of Allen and Kanda to jump out of the way and avoid getting caught in the crossfire as the four newcomers clumsily emptied their guns at the mummy.

The creature was not at all pleased by this intervention and was clearly about to launch a counter-attack when suddenly, a white cat** jumped on the piano in the room, looking malevolently at the mummy as it bared its fangs and hissed.

Surprisingly, the mummy didn't take this too well, and in fact, looked quite terrified as it released a high-pitched wail before turning into a miniature sandstorm that completely engulfed the room for a split-second before finally flying out the open window.

And then he was gone.

"Er, excuse me," Allen sheepishly asked, vainly trying to hide the blush that colored his face as he struggled weakly under Kanda's grasp. In that split-second when the sand covered everything, the Japanese man had pulled him into a tight, protective embrace and the younger man was now trying his best to get out of it without offending the older man's feelings. It wasn't like he disliked being held like this. He liked it a lot actually, this unexpected warmth from the other man, that familiar yet odd smell of lotus flowers, and… the sound of his heartbeat that was a little quick, reflecting the panic that didn't show on the man's perpetually pissed off face.

In fact, he might have liked it a little _too much, _and that the only reason he just had to escape was so that he wouldn't have to go through that horrifying experience of doubting his own sexuality again, which he had done, several times back in Hamunaptra, actually. During those rare times when he would have the pleasure of seeing the rude man sleeping soundly beside him at camp.

"Um, if you don't mind…would you please let go of me?" Allen smiled uncertainly. "Or perhaps, at least loosen the death grip because I am finding it gravely difficult to brea—"

"Oh shut up for once, beansprout," the Japanese man sighed, sounding annoyed as he immediately let go and stood up, looking at anything but Allen.

"Thank you," the British man muttered as he pushed himself up and brushed the dirt from his clothes. "That was a close call."

"Hell yeah, it was," came the only reply, followed by a litany of curses as Kanda mercilessly kicked a drunk Lavi off the floor as revenge for almost shooting him back then.

Allen watched the two bicker for a moment (well, not exactly – Kanda was trying to make Lavi hold still long enough to give the man a good-sized cut on the face while the latter was doing his best to thwart the former's efforts) before realizing that he had been staring at the _Kanda_ for a quite a while.

_Oh dear,_ was the only thought that came into mind as his gloved hand covered his face, desperately trying to cover the blush that had turned into a serious shade of red. _Dear Lord, what am I thinking? For a moment there I seriously considered…no, this is madness. I CANNOT, no, should NOT have such impure—_

"What the hell happened in here?" A furious female voice roared. "And what— oh. _Oh my god_. OH MY GOD. No, no, no, this is not _fuckin'_ real, no, Skin isn't…_NO_!"

The whole room grew severely quiet, save for the sound of Lulu's hysteric weeping as she weakly knelt beside the shriveled husk that was once the candy-loving Skin Bolic.

Allen shuddered at the sound, unconsciously edging closer to Kanda as he suddenly wished for nothing else in the world but to be trapped in the other man's embrace once again.

And unknown to him, the Japanese man was thinking of the exact same thing.

* * *

**A/N: Yes, you caught me. I am obviously over-compensating. Two updates in a week's time? After THREE YEARS on hiatus? Huh. Of course, only extremely guilty and remorseful people like me would do that.**

**ANNOUNCEMENT: I've decided to add a bit of Tyki/Allen here. You know, just to spice things up a bit. But it'll definitely end up as YULLEN anyway, so to the fans, don't start pulling your hairs out. :D**

***liberty corset - according to Wikipedia, it's a softer, more comfortable kind of corset, a bit like what we have nowadays, though a lot more lacy.  
**

****White cat – remember that cat that swallowed Timcampy at the first episode? Yeah, it's this one. **

**I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and as usual, I'll be waiting for your lovely, lovely reviews! Please do tell me what you think! **


	10. lovers and lost souls

**A/N: Just a little heads up…**

**To accommodate the Tyki/Allen scenes I have playing in my head, I will be moving away from the plotline of the Mummy for a bit. **

**So yeah, expect some unexpected stuff, like 3000-year old flashbacks, etc. which might contain a bit of fluff and some hints of violent sex (only hints because, again, this story is still RATED T). There might even be some sentimental shit involved, only because D. Grayman updated all of a sudden (I mean, I was drinking coffee and nearly spat it out on my laptop), and revealed some nice personality from the 14th other than being a bloodthirsty Noah. **

* * *

**CHAPTER 10: LOVERS AND LOST SOULS**

* * *

Cross was not at all pleased by sound of urgent footsteps that disrupted his nap, even if they had belonged to a certain group of black-robed people who were a part of the very organization he had pledged his life to.

"What. The. Hell," were his kind words of welcome as he stared at the bespectacled leader of the Medjai, or the _Black Order_ as the redheaded man chose to call them, solely because of their clothing preferences. "Jesus, Komui. Don't you know how to knock?"

"We knocked," came the bemused reply of a man who was too tired to humor his old friend. "Only, you were too passed-out drunk to hear us. So we let ourselves in, as always."

"Tsk. Want one something to drink?" He loosely offered as he attempted to get pull his shit together and stand up without having to lean on the statue of a naked pharaoh for support.

"We do not have time for your usual foolishness, Marian," Komui chided, raising one hand up to stop his sister, who looked like she was ready to kick some sense into the other man's mind. "Tyki Mikk has awakened from his slumber, thanks to your meddlesome nephew."

"Don't look at _me_ as if it were all _my _fault," Cross blanched, defiantly crossing his arms over his chest when the hangover that was driving a nail through his head began to tone down. "I _warned_ you losers, remember? It's not like I could just tie him up here or kill him! Hell no, I've already got too much of the police after my ass." At this point, the man began to look around for a nearby glass of water to wash the alcohol off of his brain. There was none, and Cross cursed inwardly. Where was that useless boy when you needed him? "Anyway, it was _your_ job to stop him, which you obviously failed to do. Christ, I never thought you guys would be this incompetent."

Lenalee looked like she was really going to murder him in cold blood, but Komui's levelheadedness persevered. "I know. And I am deeply sorry about that," he continued. "That's why I propose that we—"

"_YOU!"_

The members of the Black Order turned to see half a dozen pistols (and one Japanese sword) menacingly pointed at them.

"Oh, idiot nephew. You're finally back," Cross commented, oblivious to the weapons aimed at him. Although he was somewhat, a little, kind of, not really – okay, _not at all _relieved that his nephew had returned, he was definitely disappointed that the boy had returned visibly _unharmed_, and this disappointment showed. He wanted Allen to at least have some nearly-fatal wounds on him.

"Cross! What the bloody hell is this about?" Allen demanded, and for a moment wished that _he_ was holding a gun. "What are _they _doing here?"

"Stop bitching, damn it," the other man groaned as he clutched his head, his hangover still in place. "They're here to help us."

"_Help us? _Those fuckers tried to kill us!" Road sneered, her forefingers hovering dangerously over the triggers. Unlike Allen, she was more likely capable of shooting at the smallest provocation.

"We _saved_ you, remember?" Lenalee snapped, taking out her own gun in defense and would have fired if Komui had not given her a stern look of disapproval. "Just how ungrateful are you?" She did not like this teenager at all, and would have preferred to leave her buried under some rocks in Hamunaptra, _after_ she had thrown a jar of flesh-eating dung beetles into her grave.

"Lenalee," Komui warned as he placed a hand over hers and gently put her gun down. "We're not here to fight them. We are here to cooperate with them."

"Cooperate?" Lavi asked, suspicious. He did not trust these people, not when they had charged into their camp a couple of nights ago, broken his bottle of stolen wine, and almost killed his best friend. Though they had truly saved their hides from that hideous mummy in the City of the Dead, first impressions have a tendency to last. "You mean, you'd like to help us escape from certain death?"

"Fucking genius," Kanda commented, rolling his eyes. "What else were they suppose to mean, hoser?"

"Dunno," Lavi chirped. "Like, maybe sacrifice us so that the almighty mummy will be appeased and all of mankind will be saved?"

"Unfortunately," Komui interjected. "Things aren't that simple. Regardless of whether he kills you or not, the creature will still remain and wreak havoc."

"Eh, so why's it so bent on killin' us folks then?" David asked, confusedly rubbing the back of his head with the butt of his gun. "I mean, can't it just kill somebody else?"

"Yeah, yeah!" His twin enthusiastically agreed. "There are lotsa people in this place! Plenty of choices, yum yum!"

Allen couldn't help but cringe at the Americans' apparent lack of social responsibility.

"I'm afraid it's not that simple either," the bespectacled man patiently replied, not at all surprised by their response. He had expected it of them anyway. "Since you were the ones who opened the chest, only your deaths will replenish his powers. He knows this, and for this he will hunt you down to the ends of the earth."

Kanda whistled. "Tough break," he remarked, a not-so-concealed smirk pulling at the corners of his mouth.

"Yeah, we're all tears for you fellas," Lavi wiped an invisible tear from his remaining and sniffed, though it suspiciously sounded like a snicker to everyone else in the room.

Allen wanted to smack both of them for being the jerks they are.

"Oh shut up, all of you!" Cross hollered, fed up with all the noise that did not help the migraine that had miraculously appeared in his head. "Jesus Christ, can we like, what's the word—oh right, fucking_ FOCUS_ here? Everyone's about to die, and all you kids can think about is how to keep your dicks from falling off, _god_."

All of them looked like they were about to say something rude in response, but Cross simply raised his hand and gave them the sharpest glare he could muster to shut them up. And surprisingly, they all did.

Especially Allen, who had seen that glare only twice in his lifetime and had never forgotten that in those two times, the receiving end of that glare ended up _dead_. As unreliable as his uncle might look, the man had the frightening prowess of an assassin when it came to handling weapons, and the people he had killed didn't even see the gun being drawn when they were shot.

"That's better," Cross grinned, satisfied at the comfortable silence. "Now pay attention, because I hate repeating myself. I'm going to explain what the hell if going on once and for all."

"Finally," Lavi muttered under his breath, which earned him a dirty look from the other redhead in the room.

"So yeah," Cross started, settling down comfortably on the bronze throne of Rameses III, that was on display in the middle of the room. This act of complete disregard for the sanctity of the ancient relic earned a strangled cry from a certain British librarian, which the redhead happily ignored. "Let's start at the part where you guys screwed everything up, shall we?"

* * *

After about fifteen minutes of talking with bouts of heavy drinking and smoking in between, Allen, Kanda, Lavi, and all the Americans finally understood that they were in very, very deep shit indeed.

"So," Allen carefully clarified, knowing that he was going to regret it later. "What you're saying is, you're part of this Black Order—"

"The Medjai," Komui corrected.

"—dedicated to protecting the secret of Hamunaptra for more than three thousand years now in order to prevent the cursed high priest, Tyki Mikk, from being revived and taking his revenge on the world?"

"Hn."

"And that the passage that I read from the Book of the Dead was actually the exact spell needed to revive him?"

"Hn."

Allen swallowed hard. "And so, this is all, technically, _my _bloody fault, isn't it?"

A shot glass hit him squarely on the face. "Didn't I just tell you that I absolutely hate repeating myself?" Cross jeered, before grabbing the entire bottle of whiskey and drinking directly from it. "Yeah, it's all _your_ fault, because really, like your father, you like meddling with things not to be messed with." Cross could see the warning in his nephew's face but he ignored it. Some part of him was telling him to not go too far, but the man was too drunk to make sense of anything. "That's why he fucking _died_ and _you_ ended up with that freaky left arm and cursed eye."

"Left arm?" Kanda raised his eyebrow at the gloved hand that he had only noticed now. All the mirth that came from seeing the pompous British man excellently schooled by his creepy douche of an uncle was replaced by unbridled curiosity.

"Cursed eye? Al, baby, what's he talking about?" Lavi asked, following Kanda's actions as he studied his friend's face.

His gloved hand immediately flew towards the left part of his face, shielding it from their curious stares. "_Nothing_!" Allen hollered, so fiercely that everyone in the room, even Kanda, instinctively took a cautious step back. Shocked (and somewhat scared) eyes gazed upon the white-haired man, mouths either ajar or clamped shut, not a single person daring to utter another word. "Do _not _talk about that!" He hissed, glowering so vehemently at Cross that everyone in the room momentarily forgot who he was. From being such a polite pacifist librarian, this was too abrupt a change to take in. They definitely felt fortunate that they were not at the receiving end of that glare. In the dimness of the Ramesseum, the few torches around cast an eerie light upon Allen's left eye – for a moment it gave off the illusion that the eye was indeed, glowing _red_.

A stifling silence fell upon the room.

"Heh, whatever," Cross muttered under his breath, and although he tried hard to pretend, it was pretty obvious that he was quite shaken as well. He looked at the other people in the room, purposely avoiding Allen's hateful gaze. "Any questions?"

"Yeah," Kanda stepped up. He didn't like hearing the drunken man talk and had this huge urge to bash a bottle of whiskey against the guy's head if he had the chance, but he was even more uncomfortable with the silence that the beansprout had created. "Why's he afraid of cats?" He asked, as if it was the most important thing in the world.

"Well," Komui answered, surprised by the question but indulged it nonetheless. "Egyptians believed that cats were the guardians of the gates of the underworld. So naturally, he's afraid of them because he thinks that they could drag him back to hell if they caught him. However," in here he paused with a sordid expression. "This is only temporary. Once he fully regenerates, he will fear nothing."

The Americans cringed. "Right! An' how's he gonna regenerate? By suckin' our organs out like what he did to poor ol' Skin!" David mourned before Road kicked him back to his senses. "The hell am I gonna let that happen to me!" The teenager declared, with an admirable level of determination.

"Why's he even doing this again?" Lavi wondered, absently rubbing his chin with the barrel of his gun. "I mean, what's making our mummy so desperate? You're sayin' he wants to take his revenge on the world, but I've got a feeling that there's more to this than that. Like, why was he even cursed in the first place?"

"Good point," Kanda conceded, looking at Cross and Komui expectantly. "So?"

"He had…an affair," the bespectacled man sighed, shaking his head as if he himself couldn't believe that all of this chaos was caused by such a simple thing. "With the Pharaoh's prized consort, who, according to the scriptures, was called –"

"Anck-su-namun."

All heads hesitantly snapped towards Allen's direction.

" 'One who lives for the Sun God' "he translated, brows furrowed in concentration, his left eye no longer glowing. Seeing him back to his normal, nerdy self allowed most of the occupants in the room to breathe a sigh of relief. As if by mutual agreement, all of them decided to just ignore the man's strange left arm and eye. "Back in the necropolis, the mummy, this Tyki Mikk, he…he called me by that name. And then in Skin's room, after he…_transformed_, the first person he looked at was me." Bewildered, the British man looked at Komui for an explanation. "But it wasn't a hostile expression. No, even when he had called out to me it was…for lack of a better term, I'd say it was quite _endearing._"

"Say what?" Lavi's jaw fell open. "Al, baby, love of my life, and payer of my debts – okay maybe not the last one put the fist _down_ – _please_ tell me that you are not having strange bouts of necrophilia! I swear to Ra, I will _kill_ myself if that's the case." As if to emphasize on his point, the one-eyed man pressed the barrel of his pistol against his temple.

"Tell him 'yes,'" Kanda strongly advised, and Allen threw him a dirty look but couldn't completely repress the amused smile on his lips. He looked as if he was entertaining the idea, which alarmed Lavi greatly.

"No," Allen finally replied, and the redhead heaved a great sigh of relief before removing the gun from his head.

Komui, on the other hand, did not immediately reply, and instead took some time to study Allen, as if this was the first time he was truly _seeing_ the younger man. Feeling very self-conscious all of a sudden, Allen crossed his arms over his chest defensively and gave the man a questioningly glare. "Excuse me?"

"Sorry," Komui blinked and coughed on his fist, averting his eyes. "I just…realized something."

"What is it, brother?" Lenalee asked, appearing just as confused as Allen and the rest. "Why is the creature mistaking Allen Walker for his dead lover?"

"Lover? The hell?" Road scowled, not happy with the idea of an undead mummy for her rival.

"Because he looks like a girl?" Kanda offered, smirking at the scowl he earned from the aforementioned Brit. Then his face resumed its perplexed expression, though this one had a tinge of alarm that only Allen's watchful eyes had noticed. The man gave him the same questioningly gaze he had given Komui but Kanda evaded it smoothly.

"Actually, Anck-su-namun is male," Komui continued. "He was the first male concubine in Egyptian history, and with good reason too, for it was written that he had a beauty so great, both men and women, servant or guard, would always turn to behold him."

"So he's picking Allen because he's hot?" Road mused.

"Eww," Cross sneered, which his nephew pointedly ignored.

"That's the idea, yes," Komui replied. "What I initially thought was that he would be going after you because you read from the Book of the Dead, but from what our clan's history tells us, the curse doesn't work that way. The only people he's supposed to hunt down should be those who opened the chest and no one else." Ignoring the whimpers from the Americans, the man's face darkened ominously. "Therefore, the only explanation would be that he has chosen _you_ to be his human sacrifice – a fresh human body for Anck-su-namun's soul once he brings it back from the afterlife."

The light in the museum wasn't bright to begin with, but it was enough for everyone to see Allen's face lose several shades of color.

"You mean…I…"

"Yes," the man somberly affirmed. "He will be coming for you too. And the fate that awaits you is worse than that of the world."

* * *

In his past 3000 years of cursed torment, Tyki Mikk, despite the horrid pain and the nightmares that plagued him, had only dared to dream of one thing. Namely, one _person_.

Anck-su-namun.

That was his given name, the name that Egypt used to exalt him. _The one who lives for the Sun God._ It made sense to give him such a grand name, for whom else would someone with such dazzling, ethereal beauty offer his life to, if it weren't to the great Sun God himself? Indeed, the name suited him, for his eyes were golden like the brilliant god at the zenith of the day, and his skin a beautiful olive color, dark and rich like the color of good, fertile soil. His face was difficult to describe properly, for there were not enough words in any language that could possible justify the kind of beauty he beheld. If it hadn't been blasphemy to say so, everyone would've agreed that he was more beautiful than the gods themselves.

Other people, the more callous, jealous ones, would sneer and call him the Fourteenth, simply to rub it in that he was the fourteenth consort of Pharaoh Seti I, who after losing his beloved queen, had indulged in a life of hedonism to dull the despair. And Anck-su-namun had been his latest – and by far most favored – prize and toy.

But Tyki knew him by another name.

It was his _real_ name, his secret name – the name the held his memories, his identity, and his very life in its essence. Every living being had it, that secret name, and they, the Egyptians, had called it _ren_. It was the name of the soul itself, and knowing the _ren _of another person would give someone complete power of that person. In Egypt, it was forbidden to ask for someone's secret name, and even the Pharoah, with all his power, cannot force his subjects to give up theirs.

But Anck-su-namun had told Tyki, on that fateful night when they shared their first kiss and descended into an abyss of forbidden pleasures. He remembered it as if it had happened only a night ago, and he could still hear the pleasured screams ringing in his ears as well as the feeling of his breath against Tyki's skin, breathing heavily. His slender fingers raked against the high priest's skin, drawing blood as the pleasure they both felt built up inside them, like a sandstorm forcefully contained and was now violently edging to be released.

And just as they both exploded into heavenly pleasures, his beloved had embraced him tight, whispering in wild, passionate abandon into his ear.

_Neah_.

The one who walks forward.

It was a beautiful name.

Tyki Mikk stirred from the momentary lapse into his memories – he wasn't asleep because he didn't need to, but he caught himself drifting into the times long past, and wishing, for a moment, that things were still as they were.

_Soon, _he thought, rising from the shadows, his un-regenerated face startling an unfortunate beggar off the road. _Soon everything will be right again._

Memories of a warm smile, of a modest picnic under the stars, of a kiss and soft fingers intertwined with his own briefly flashed across his mind, images that he hesitantly brushed away. This was no time to revel in pointless recollections. If he acted quickly, these images would be figments of his memories no longer – soon, he'll be able to see Neah again, and bask under the light of his beautiful smile.

After living in the darkness for almost three millennia, a smile from his beloved was all that he wanted to see.

He promised to revive him, and he will. This time, he will _not _fail.

With this resolve, his golden eyes followed a tall, dark-skinned figure frantically pushing his way through the overcrowded marketplace, and a hideous grin stretching upon his rotten lips.

* * *

"We have got to stop him from regenerating."

"There's that 'we' again," Kanda drawled in exasperation, getting annoyed at the British man that was pacing up and down the room. "Look, I changed my mind and decided to help. But that doesn't mean I agreed to haul _deadweight_ while I fight the undead."

Allen scowled as he realized who "deadweight" had pertained to. "You arrogant twat! Sure, you might be more skilled in combat and the art-of-blowing-things-up-unnecessarily but _I _am more knowledgeable about Ancient Egypt!"

"Yeah, so?" Kanda yawned, unconvinced.

"_So_?" Allen cried in outrage. "Are you really as brainless as I always thought you were? Honestly, I was just teasing, but if you were truly mentally incapacitated then I deeply _apologize_ for my—"

"Oh, shut up, beansprout," Kanda snapped, sighing. "I know that mortal things can't kill this things . but I also know that he's after _you_ more than he's after these American losers over here –"

"Hey!" David protested.

" – and dragging you around while we hunt this guy would the be most stupid thing ever." Kanda continued, rising from his seat as he strapped his sword onto his waist. "So me, the Americans, and your thief friend will be going out to at least try to delay the mummy, while you stay put, read some books, and be the good girl that you are."

Allen wasn't the only one who didn't like the idea.

"Hey! The fuck am I goin' back out there! The mummy's after our brains an' all!" Jasdero refused.

"Yeah, yeah!" David heartily agreed. "We're stayin' here, where it's safe."

"You guys are such _losers_ I just can't believe I'm even related to any of you!" Road exclaimed, giving her uncles two good kicks on the shin. The twins hopped around the room, throwing curses and hissing in pain. The teenager grinned and turned to Kanda, her golden eyes twinkling in excitement. "I'm all in, Mr. Jap. I've gotta guns an' the experience to use it. I ain't gonna be deadweight around 'ere."

"Great," Kanda remarked, not really embracing the idea of a little girl emptying bullets into an immortal's rotting corpse but he made use of what he could get. He then threw a warning look at Lavi who looked like he was just about to decline as well. The redhead immediately shut his mouth. He obviously preferred to die by the mummy's hand than by whatever torture the Japanese man had in store for him. His ribs were still throbbing from the fierce beating he received just that morning.

Allen wasn't intimidated. "What bloody fool put _you_ in charge? _I'm_ the one responsible for this mess, and I intend to clean it u— what on earth are you doing? PUT ME DOWN!"

Apparently, Kanda has had enough. He lifted the man onto his shoulder, stumbling a bit as the British man did _not_ weigh as light as he looked. The ex-colonel thought he was carrying a big block of lard or something as nasty and heavy, but to his credit, he did not falter under Allen's weight. Instead, he strolled into the bedroom with the thrashing man on his shoulder and dropped him on the bed. He had half the mind to drop him _on the floor_ but this was no time to have fun.

Before Allen could recover, Kanda had already strolled out of the room and slammed the doors shut, locking it with the skeleton key he had requested from the front desk. Seconds later, the sound of British curses and fists pounding against the door could be heard.

"Alright," Kanda smirked, quite pleased with himself. He threw the skeleton key at David. "You, make your ass useful and guard this door. If you leave it – and believe me, I will _know_ if you did – I will literally rip your spleen out. Got it?"

David caught the key and frowned as he looked at his brother. "Whatsa 'spleen' Jasdero?"

His twin scratched his blonde head. "Ey, no idea, David. Some kinda cleanin' machine, maybe?"

Road gave his uncles another round of kicks on the shin. "You idiots," she clucked disdainfully. "The spleen's _inside_ your body. Like an organ or something. So what the Jap's sayin', if you let dear Allen out or if anything bad happens to him, he'll use that sword of his to open your tummies and rips your guts out."

Both Americans paled.

"And that's only _one_ of the things we'll do to you if ever something bad happens to _my_ Allen," Road chirped, malevolently playing with her pistols. "So don't screw up on guard duty."

The twins gulped and nodded weakly. They've known Road for years, and most of their nightmares were simply memories of what the things Road and her creepy-ass seriously dangerous father had done.

"Now that's a good boy," the teenager beamed and turned towards Kanda and Lavi. "Let's go kick some stickin' mummy ass, Jap! You too, Red!"

"Tsk, who put _you_ in charge?" Kanda grumbled, rolling his eyes as he dragged a whimpering Lavi out of the room.

* * *

**A/N: Er…does that count as a cliffhanger? No, no, I don't really think so but I'm not sure because I've been ending most, if not all, of my chapters in all my stories with a cliffhanger. Believe me when I say it's not because I am a bully who loves to push you off a cliff and watch you hold on as you painstakingly wait for the next chapter, which might be in a few days (if you're really lucky) or in a few months (if you're not). **

**I'm not a bully. I just have no idea how to end a chapter without making it look like a cliffhanger. **

**I'm practicing, but there's still a lot of room for improvement there.**

**Anyway, about the name of the Fourteenth:**

**Okay, I know it's "Nea" not "Neah" but if you Google their meanings, you'll see that "Nea" is some Nordic word for "flower" while "Neah" is a Hebrew word for "to keep moving forward." If it were up to you, which would you choose?**


End file.
